If your school has a Valentine’s Day party, you may be looking forward to sharing valentines with your classmates next week. Or maybe you’re planning to give a special valentine to a boy or girl you really like. Whoever you send your valentines to this year, you probably haven’t heard the history of Valentine’s Day cards.

The Duke of Orleans, a French nobleman who was captured by the British during a war, wrote the first valentine in 1415. He missed his wife very much and sent her love letters during his captivity. He filled his letters with poems that had rhyming verses.

The concept of sending similar letters caught on as more people learned to read and write. By the 1800s, the handmade Valentine’s Day card became popular in Britain. Many of the valentines made during the reign of Queen Victoria, known as Victorian valentines, had fancy ribbons and lace on them. At this stage, the cards were still made on single sheets of paper. The British postal service was always busy on Valentine’s Day delivering handmade cards.

In America, Valentine’s Day was not popular right away. Part of the reason was that few women came to the colonies in the early days so men had no sweethearts who expected cards. By the mid-1700s, some Americans exchanged handmade Valentine’s Day cards. Though not as sophisticated as British valentines, colonists found clever ways to make cards attractive. For example, women might use their sewing needles to poke tiny holes around a romantic verse, creating a pinprick border. If someone couldn’t write poetry, they could still send valentines thanks to British imported booklets that offered stumped lovers the verses they needed for a card.

In the mid-1800s, creating Valentine’s Day cards became a commercial business. Esther Howland designed the first commercial valentines in the U.S. Although businesswomen were rare in the 1800s, Esther set up her own workspace and sold valentines in her father’s stationary store. She used fine materials like lace and embossed paper.

Today sending valentines is still very popular, and people can choose from a wide variety of romantic, funny, or sweet cards to send to sweethearts or friends. In fact, in the U.S. Valentine’s Day is second only to Christmas in greeting card sales.Machine-made valentines appeared around 1880. Though the cards were cheaper they were also not as personal as early valentines. By the 1900s, valentines were often hinged so they could stand and be displayed. Some had moveable parts. For example,  one card showed a cherubic girl whose eyes moved with the pull of a tab.