Envelope
- An envelope is a sheet of paper given a specific shape (typically that of a rhombus or a short arm cross) which ensures that when its sides are folded about a central rectangular area a rectangular-faced enclosure is formed with an arrangement of four flaps on the reverse side with overlapping edges; although in principle the flaps can be held in place by securing the topmost flap at a single point(for example with a wax seal), generally they are pasted or gummed together at the overlaps. They are most commonly used for enclosing and sending mail (letters) through a prepaid-postage postal system.
Up until 1840 all envelopes were made by hand, by individually cutting the appropriate shape out of an individual rectangular sheet. In that year George Wilson in the U.K. patented the method of tessellating (tiling) a number of envelope patterns across and down a large sheet, thereby reducing the amount of waste produced per envelope when they were cut out. In 1845 Edwin Hill and de la Rue obtained a patent for a steam-driven machine which not only cut out the envelope shapes but creased and folded them as well. (Mechanised gumming had yet to be devised.)
As envelopes are made of paper they are intrinsically amenable to embellishment with additional graphics and text over and above the necessary postal indicia. This is a feature which the direct mail industry has long taken advantage of, and more recently the Mail Art movement.
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Referenced By
Letter | Letters | List of mathematical topics (D-F) | List of mathematical topics (F-Z) | List of philatelic topics
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