Believe it or not, envelopes have been around for centuries. The practice of enclosing missives in a sealed “cover” spread to Europe likely via the Ottoman Empire. In the pre-machine age, of course, those were all done by hand, but a prolific British inventor named Warren De La Rue, along with his stamp-maker partner Edwin Hill created one of the first envelope-folding machines. Their invention caused a popular enough reaction to be included in the first world’s fair – the Great Exhibition of 1851. But unbeknownst to them, they were actually the second ones to make such a machine.

On this day, January 23, in 1849, the first stateside patent was granted for an envelope folding machine, to Jesse K. Park and Cornelius S. Watson. For reasons lost to history, however, the machine was never built commercially, leaving it to De la Rue and company to actually bring one to the market.

It should come as no surprise that the envelope machine came from Warren De la Rue: if there could have been a European rival to Thomas Edison, De la Rue was it. While officially employed in his family’s stationary business, for which he made the machine, his greater passion was chemistry and science. He actually made the first working light bulb with a platinum coil, but the high cost of the metal made his discovery impractical for commercial use.