Anyone know how the phrase "pushing the envelope" came about?

Question

I hear it all the time, just wondering what its refering to.

Answer 1

From Word Detective :

""Pushing the envelope" is a good example of how jargon -- the specialized or technical vocabulary of a group or profession -- gradually enters general usage. "Pushing the envelope" comes from the jargon of test pilots, and has actually been around since the end of the Second World War. The "envelope" involved is a sort of visual metaphor for the technical limits of a high-performance aircraft. A graph of such an aircraft's performance would appear as a rising slope as the craft approaches its limits of speed and stress, then fall off rapidly (putting it mildly) when the plane exceeds its capacity and the pilot loses control. Safety, relatively speaking, lies within these limits, or "inside the envelope." A pilot who "pushes the envelope" and tries to exceed the known capabilities of the aircraft risks what engineers delicately term "catastrophic system failure," otherwise known as a crash.

Because "pushing the envelope" had such a esoteric origin, it took a best-selling book -- Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff" in 1979 -- and later the popular movie "Top Gun" to introduce it to the general public. Since then it has begun to crop up in increasingly non-technical contexts, to the point where it is now a currently trendy metaphor for simply "pushing it," or testing the limits of what is permissible in a given situation."

Answer 2

Pushing the envelope is a relatively recent word stemming from the jargon of test pilots in the 60's. To "push the envelope" means to stretch to the limit, to go as far as you can. The airplane makers specified an envelope of safety, outside of which the planes were not designed to fly.
The test pilots were instructed to push the limits of that safety envelope to see what the plane could withstand. In the movie The Right Stuff, based on the 1979 Tom Wolfe book of the same title, the pilot speaks of "pushing the outer edge of the envelope".

Answer 3

I believe the phrase originated as the United States started developing jet air craft, circa late 40's. Indeed, the envelope refers to the operational limitations of aircraft. As aircraft became faster and more maneuverable, sometimes leading to accidents due to compromising the structural integrity of the aircraft itself, the phrase came more into use.