[smiley1437]

That's a lot of faith in the strength of a small strip of paper, I'd probably rip the thing several times just trying to make it like the video

Did they have stronger paper back then?

[sbradford26]

Making paper was a lot harder back then and they didn't have the machinery to create the uniform thin paper we have now. So you ended up with a thicker paper with more variance.

[bombcar]

I assume they did but costs were associated - considering they were avoiding envelopes.