Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1899 — THE SEALING OF LETTERS. [ARTICLE]

THE SEALING OF LETTERS.

Something About the Ofd-Time Process and the Modern, Before the invention of the gummed envelope, various methods were used for sealing letters. The first seals consisted of a ring that was affixed to clay or bole, and later to chalk or creta astatica, a mixture of pitch, wax and plaster. The use of wax did not become general until the Middle Ages. Beeswax, made yellow by time, was the first material used. Then came sealing wax mixed with a white substance. Red wax began with Louis VI., in 1113, and green wax made its appearance about 1163. In the thirteenth century, yellow, brown, and blue were added to the other colors; and black wax is a rarity met with in the seals of the military and religious orders. Among the ancients, ring seals were used not only for sealing letters, but also —as small locks were not common—for sealing caskets and chests that contained valuable objects; and they were even used for sealing the doors of houses and apartments. Under the First Empire, people began to use wafers, which were brought from Italy by the soldiers and officers of the French army. These wafers were cut with a punch out of a thin leaf made of flour. Finally gummed envelopes gradually began to replace sealing wax and wafers nearly everywhere. The first envelopes, which were manufactured in England, date back to 1840. The machine for folding them was invented in 1843, by Edwin Hill and Warren de la Rue, and in 1849 was so improved by the latter that it was capable of folding and gumming 3,600 envelopes an hour. Since 1850 the annual production of envelopes has been greatly increasing, and there are now being manufactured In Paris alone 1,500,000 dally.