 In 1845, Edwin Hill and Warren De La Rue were granted a British patent for the first envelope-making machine.The "envelopes" produced by the Hill/De La Rue machine were not like those used today.They were flat diamond, lozenge (or rhombus)-shaped sheets or "blanks" that had been precut to shape before being fed to the machine for creasing and made ready for folding to form a rectangular enclosure.