GB2055692A

GB2055692A - An envelope comprising front and rear walls and information carrier

Info

Publication number: GB2055692A
Application number: GB8025274A
Authority: GB
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1979-08-02
Filing date: 1980-08-01
Publication date: 1981-03-11
Also published as: ATA387980A; EP0023698B1; DK154884B; GB2055692B; DK334680A; DE2931407C2; BE884601A; AT378161B; FR2463071B1; IT1132301B; IT8023892A0; DK154884C; ES252381U; EP0023698A1; DE3065683D1; DE2931407A1; FR2463071A1

Description

1 GB2055692A 1

SPECIFICATION

An envelope comprising front and rear walls and an information carrier This invention relates to an envelope of the kind comprising a front and a rear wall and an information carrier, wherein the front and rear walls each comprise a portion which is adapted to be torn off and wherein perforated tear lines which join said portions to the remainder of the front and rear walls are not mutually coincident.

An envelope of the kind specified is de- scribed in US Patent No. 3411699, wherein each of the front and rear walls comprise transport strips which can be torn off after processing. German AS No. 20 24 403 describes an envelope which comprises a perfor- ations which extend right through the front and rear walls and enables a marginal strip to be torn off along said perforations. The dimensions of this envelope are chosen in such a way that the outer edge of the information carrier is accommodated within the remaining part of the envelope after this marginal strip has been torn off. For ready removal of the information carrier from the envelope the marginal edges of the front and rear walls of the envelope are each provided with a cut-out and the information carrier has a tab which projects out of said cut-out. This means that the front as well as the rear wall and the information carrier must be specially processed prior to sealing down.

It is an object of the present invention to provide an envelope of the kind specified which is easier to make and allows the information carrier to be easily taken out of the envelope when the latter has been correctly opened.

Accordingly, the invention resides in an envelope comprising a front wall, a rear wall and an information carrier, wherein the front and rear walls each comprise a portion which is adapted to be torn off, wherein perforated tear lines which join said portions to the remainder of the front and rear walls are not mutually coincident, and wherein only one of the walls comprises at least one transport strip.

Further features and advantages of the invention arise from the following specific description of embodiments illustrated by way of example in the accompanying drawings wherein:

Figure I is a perspective view of an envelope partly ripped open, Figure 2 is a section taken along the line 11-11 in Fig. 1, and Figure 3 is an exploded view of the arrangement according to Fig. 1.

Referring to the drawings, the layered structure of the envelope is best shown in Fig. 2 where the individual layers are shown in spaced apart position for clearer representation. The envelope comprises a front wall 14, the width of which is chosen such as to allow it to be transported by means of marginal guide holes 27, 28 arranged on either side thereof through strip- processing machines, particularly through a continuous collating machine. Adjacent one side of the front wall 14 there is provided a line of perforations 12 which enables a marginal strip 16 carrying the guide holes 28 to be severed from the remainder of the envelope. The outermost surface of the front wall 14 is provided with suitable panels or markings 19 for an address.

The lowermost surface of the front wall 14 is overprinted to make it sufficiently opaque to prevent the contents of the envelope being read by unauthorised persons.

The rear wall 15 of the envelope is not provided with transport strips and therefore is of correspondingly smaller size. It is just wide enough to enable its marginal regions to be adhesively attached to the layers thereabove along gummed sealing lines 29, 30, leaving enough room between the areas of fixed attachment to accommodate the actual information carrier 17. Adjacent the side of the rear wall 15 underlying the feedhole strip 16, there is provided a line of perforations 13.

The information carrier 17 is arranged between the front wall 14 and the rear wall 15. Along a permanently sealed side 31 of the - envelope the information carrier 17 does not comprise a transport strip, or else this strip has been torn off over a sufficiently wide area prior to fitting the component parts of the envelope together so that one edge 32 of the information carrier 17 lies freely inside the envelope close to the sealing line 29. In the embodiment of the invention shown in Fig. 1 to 3 the opposite side of the information carrier 17 is provided with a transport strip having individual guide holes appropriately spaced to register with those in the transport strip of the front wall 14. The rear wall 15 is adhesively sealed to the underside of the outside edge of information carrier 17 by means of the gummed sealing line 30. On its upper side the information carrier 17 is pro- vided with a gummed line 33 alongside the guide holes but inwardly offset relative thereto, by means of which it is sealed to the lowermost surface of the front wall 14. The rear wall of the envelope is further provided with gummed lines 34, 35 along the edges thereof which extend transversely of the direction of feed and by means of which the front and rear walls of the envelope are adhesively sealed together along said transverse edges 12 5 thereof.

By virtue of the sealing lines 30, 33, the front and rear walls 14, 15 and the information carrier 17 define mutually attached marginal portions 10, 11, 25 respectively which are separable from the remainder of the envel- 2 ope along the perforations 12, 13 and a further line of perforations 26 provided in the information carrier 17. As most clearly observable from Figs. 1 and 2, the perforation lines 12, 13, 26 are relatively offset in such a way that after the mutually adhesively attached portions 10, 25, 11, have been torn off, the torn edge of information carrier 17 projects beyond the tear line 12 of the front wall 14, while the tear line 13 of the rear wall 15 projects laterally beyond the edge of the information carrier 17. In the illustrated embodiment therefore the tear line 12 of the front wall is inwardly offset relative to the tear line 26 of the information carrier while the tear line 26 of the information carrier is in turn inwardly offset relative to the tear line 13 of the rear wall.

in the illustrated embodiment a second in- formation carrier 20 is provided on top of the front wall 14, the carrier 20 being intended to remain with the sender as a processing record. The carrier 20 comprises two transport strips with guide holes aligned with the guide holes 27, 28 respectively in the front wall 14. The carrier 20 is attached to the envelope proper simply by impressions 23, 24 stamped in the extreme margins 21, 22 of the envelope or by means of simple spots of adhesive.

This makes it easy for the second information carrier 20 to be detached and remain with the sender after processing whilst the rest of the envelope with the main information carrier 17 contained therein is despatched to a receiver.

To open the envelope the latter is firmly gripped between one forefinger and i..umb on the permanently sealed side thereof (i.e. the side opposite the openable side) as indicated by the arrows 36, 37 in Fig. 2, whilst the tear-off portions are taken in the other hand in the region indicated by the arrows 38, 39 and torn off as shown in Fig. 1 whereby the information carrier 17 is exposed between the front and rear walls and is easily accessible for removal.

In the above described example the front wall is chosen to be smaller in width than the rear wall. Naturally the position could be reversed, i.e. the rear wall could be narrower than the front wall of the envelope. It is, however, important that one of the two walls of the envelope is narrower than the information carrier whilst the other envelope wall is wider than the information carrier.

Basically it is also possible to arrange the tear lines in such a way that, after the separable portions have been torn off, one side wall of the envelope is narrower than the information carrier whilst the other wall has the same width as the latter. However, with this arrangement the information carrier ', not quite so easy to take out of the envelope as in the earlier described embodiment.

In the above described embodiments of the invention the information carrier 17 is pro- GB2055692A 2 vided with a tear-off portion 25 which serves as a transport strip for guiding the information carrier. Where this is not required, the transport strip portion may be dispensed with and in this case the width of the information carrier 17 would be chosen so that the edge 18 thereof, when the information carrier is inserted into the envelope between the front and rear walls, has spatially the same relation- ship relative to the tear lines 12 and 13 of front and rear walls respectively as described above.

By adopting the above described arrangement there is no longer any necessity for treating the rear wall 15 because it is no longer necessary to provide a cut-out therein to give access to the information carrier. According to the present invention the rear wall of the envelope can be composed of a non- translucent paper so that no over-printing is required to prevent unauthorised reading of the information carrier contents. It is therefore possible to produce the rear wall as an untreated strip.

The above-described envelope with the information carrier is produced in conventional manner on continuously operating machines so that a large number of envelopes complete with their respective information carriers can be conducted continuously as an endless strip through correspondingly designed fast-printers. Although the invention has been described with reference to its application to the product to continuous sets, it will be appreci- ated that the envelopes according to this invention may also be used in single sets.

In the foregoing description of the illustrated example there is always a single information carrier contained in the envelope. It will be appreciated, however, that several information carriers may be provided which, as hereinbefore described, may be attached to the envelope along one of their edges or may be loosely inserted in the envelope.

Claims

1. An envelope comprising a front wall, a rear wall and an information carrier, wherein the front and rear walls each comprise a portion which is adapted to be torn off, wherein perforated tear lines which join said portions to the remainder of the front and rear walls are not mutually coincident, and wherein only one of the walls comprises at least one transport strip.

2. An envelope as claimed in Claim 1, wherein the width of the information carrier is arranged so that one edge or perforated tear line thereof is located between the two rela- tively spaced tear lines of said front and rear walls.

3. An envelope as claimed in Claim 1 or Claim 2, wherein the front wall is provided with a marking panel and defines said trans- port strip.

I z W j 1 3 GB 2 055 692A 3

4. An envelope as claimed in Claim 3, wherein said tear lines are so arranged that, after the separable portions have been torn off, the rear wall projects beyond the front 5 wall.

5. An envelope as claimed in any one of Claims 1 to 4, and including a further information carrier attached to the envelope.

6. An envelope as claimed in Claim 5, wherein said further information carrier is attached to the envelope along at least two mutually opposite sides thereof by means of impressions stamped into the marginal edges of the envelope.

7. An envelope as claimed in Claim 5 or Claim 6 wherein the further information car rier is designed in the form of a tear-off processing copy.

8. An envelope as claimed in any one of Claims 1 to 7, wherein the first-mentioned information carrier comprises a separable portion which is attached to the separable portions of the front and rear walls.

9. An envelope as claimed in Claim 8, wherein the tear line of the separable portion of the first-mentioned information carrier is spaced from at least one of the tear lines of the front and rear walls.

10. An envelope as claimed in Claim 1 comprising the combination and arrangement of parts substantially as hereinbefore described with reference to, and as shown in the accompanying drawings.

Rinted for Her Majesty's Stationery Office by Burgess & Son (Abingdon) Ltd.-1 98 1. Published at The Patent Office, 25 Southampton Buildings, London, WC2A 1AY, from which copies may be obtained.