As with Perkins Bacon, the De La Rue story begins with an engineer and innovator – Thomas De La Rue. He was born in Guernsey in 1793, where he was apprenticed to a printer and had launched his own local paper – but the island was too small a canvas and in 1816, he moved with his family to London.
His first venture was making straw hats, but he switched to playing cards, where innovations in paper, ink and printing methods produced a more colourful, durable deck that set the style of the cards we use today. He was granted a licence to produce them in 1831. The company then branched out into personal stationery, creating stylish visiting cards, wedding invitations and even restaurant menus.
1841, as Britain entered the railway age, he was asked to produce the tickets. By 1846, the firm was printing 1.5 million a week, gaining valuable experience of long print runs. He also had an interest in gum formulations and in automation, which came together at the Great Exhibition of 1851, where Thomas and his son Warren exhibited a machine that could cut, fold and gum 2,700 envelopes per hour, while needing only one man to run it.
This brought him to the notice of the Post Office, as public demand for envelopes was hitting sales of their ‘penny pink’
