AN IMPROVE- MENT IN ENVELOPES
Year: 1860

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to John Forster Meakin, of Baker Street, Portman
Square, in the County of Middlesex, Upholsterer and Cabinet Maker,
for the Invention of 66' A Ta
Sealed the 17th July 1860, and dated. the 20th January 1860.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by tho said John Forster Meakin at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
20th January 1860.
I, JOHN FORSTER MEAKIN, of Baker Street, in the County of Middlesex,
Upholsterer, do hereby declare the nature of the Invention for "AN IMPROVE-
MENT IN ENVELOPES," to be as follows:-
This Invention has for its object an improvement in envelopes. For this
purpose black, red, or other suitable coloring matter or transfer material is
applied on the interior of an envelope, in such manner that any mark or
impression, such, for instance, as the cancelling stamp used at a pot office
may be transferred to the contents of the envelope so as to identify the
envelope with its contents.

page_text: SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed
by the said John Forster Meakin in the Great Seal Patent Office on
the 20th July 1860.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, JOHN
FORSTER MEAKIN, of No. 84, Baker Street, Portman Square, in the County
of Middlesex, Upholsterer and Cabinet Maker, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the Twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and sixty, in the twenty-third year of Her
reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto
me, the said John Forster Meakin, Her, special licence that I, the said
John Forster Meakin, my executors, administrators, and assigns, or such
others as I, the said John Forster Meakin, my executors, administrators,
and assigns, should at any time agree with, and no others, from time to time
and at all times thereafter during the term therein expressed, should and law-
fully might make, use, exercise, and vend, within the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an
Invention for "AN IMPROVEMENT IN ENVELOPES," upon the condition (amongst
others) that I, the said John Forster Meakin, my executors or adminis-
trators, by an instrument in writing under my, or their, or one of their
hands and seals, should particularly describe and ascertain the nature of
the said Invention, and in what manner the same was to be performed,
and cause the same to be filed in the Great Seal Patent Office within
six calendar months next and immediately after the date of the said Letters
Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said John-Forster-Meakin, do-hereby
declare the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is
to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement, that is to say :-
'
This Invention has for its object an improvement in envelopes. For this
purpose black, red, or other colored matter or transfer material, is applied on
the interior of an envelope in such a manner that any mark or impression
made thereon, such, for example, as the various stamps employed by the post
offices, denoting the time of posting, may, by such act of stamping, be trans-
ferred to the enclosure of the said envelope, and thus prove the date of its
transmission through the post, and thereby rendering in fact the 'letter or
enclosure an entire document as of old (with the post marks thereon) before

page_text: the introduction of envelopes, and identifying the contents with the envelope,
and I therefore call the above the "date indicator" envelope.
In witness whereof, I, the said John Forster Meakin, have hereunto set
my hand and seal, this Twentieth day of July, in the year of our
Lord One thousand eight hundred and sixty.
JOHN FORSTER MEAKIN. (L.S.)