The extraordinary history of the now commonplace postal envelope

Wedding announcements, secret business letters, invoices or simply the last payday – if all mail envelopes could tell their contents, they would fill entire novels with their stories. Although electronic mail has long since surpassed traditional letter correspondence, Europeans remain loyal to paper letters, with around 110 billion envelopes sent out each year. By comparison, only 1 billion pieces of mail were sent in 1900 and 30 million envelopes 30 years before that.

The beginning of envelopes began almost 200 years ago in Brighton, where local stationery and book seller S.K. Brewer hand-folded the first ever envelope in 1820 using metal templates. What is now a commonplace but indispensable item in every office was a rare and expensive product in the mid-19th century due to the complex manufacturing process. Due to their high demand, envelopes began to be produced on special packaging machines with production rates of up to 1600 pieces per minute. As a result, they became a mass commodity, their price decreased and they began to be widely used in commercial and private transactions. Today, postal envelopes are not only paper, but also plastic, cardboard, bubble, foam, non-woven fibre, cardboard reinforced and more and more. You can choose self-adhesive envelopes without or with cover strip, with snap closure, with polyester fibre etc. Rajapack has a wide range of postal and letter envelopes in different variants, with or without transparent address window as required.

Correct formatting Or how to “get” the address into the address window

If you are not sure how to format business letters to fit exactly into the address window of the envelope, you can seek help from various online programs such as the free downloadable “Envelope Print” program for easy printing of addresses on envelopes. Alternatively, you can set the address directly in Word → Tools → Letters → Envelopes/Stamps. A number of sites on the Czech Internet explain step by step how to compose a business letter that also complies with the relevant standards according to ČSN 88 6101 or 01 6910. For letters written without an address window, the following rule applies: postage stamp in the top right corner of the envelope, recipient’s address on the right side below the stamp, but at least 38 mm from the top edge. The sender’s place is in the top left-hand corner. The address band has a maximum height of 25,4 mm and a width of 76,2 mm. The minimum size of the address label is 35 x 70 mm.

Thanks to Brewer, we can now send well-protected and quickly packaged letters all over the world with ease. Envelopes save us time and a lot of sealing wax than it was in the days of the Emperor:). But your secrets will be preserved just as they were with the first prototypes…