Who Invented the Legal Pad

12 Déc Who Invented the Legal Pad

Legal tampons are bright yellow. They are covered with red and blue lines. They are called « legal blocks » but are mainly used by creatives or business professionals who are not lawyers. Legal blocks are a walking contradiction, a disaster of note, and yet millions and millions of legal blocks are printed and used every year. Join us as we delve into the history of legal notebooks to find out how they came about and why they are so popular. The edges of the legal pad, also known as descending lines, are drawn 1.25 inches from the left edge of the page. (This is the only requirement for a stamp to be considered a legal block, although the iconic version has yellow paper, blue lines, and a red rubberized top.) Holley added the ruling that defined the legal block in the early 1900s at the request of a local judge who was looking for space to comment on his own notes. The most well-known feature of a legal block? The color yellow. But why are they yellow? Good question.

In order to answer them, however, a brief explanation of their history is first necessary. It seems that people in the legal profession don`t always use this type of paper, and artists and writers swear by them all the time, so why on earth call them legal notepads? Explore. Part of its appeal is the unwritten rule that legal notebooks are reserved for adults; Some people describe a sense of satisfaction when they finally reach the point where they are « demanding » enough to use. After all, legal notebooks are an important matter. Legal Affairs magazine tells the secret story of the yellow legal notepad. According to legend, Thomas W. Holley of Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented the legal block around 1888 when he developed the idea of collecting all sorts of low-quality paper scraps from different factories and sewing them together to sell them as towels at an affordable and fair price. The latter then developed into the modern, traditionally yellow right-wing bloc around 1900, when a local judge requested that a margin be drawn on the left side of the paper. It was the first legal block.

[2] The only technical requirement for this type of paper mill to be considered a true « legal buffer » is that it must have 1.25-inch (3.17 centimeters) edges from the left edge. [2] Here is the margin, also called downlines[3], space used to write notes or comments. Legal stamps usually have a rubber binding at the top instead of a spiral or sewn binding. Unsolved mystery: The reason for the yellow color of legal tampons remains a mystery to this day. Some postulate that Holley used the yellow dye to hide the differences in age and quality between the remains used to release the tampon together. Another theory is that, since yellow has been shown to stimulate brain activity and creative thinking, Holley chose the yellow design. Aside from yellow paper, blue lines, and a tear-proof rubberized top, the red border is the only requirement for a stamp to be considered a legal stamp. In other words, yellow, blue, pink or purple paper, without the red border, it is not a legal block. He`s not alone either.

Many people swear that the only thing they use to write are legal blocks. There is something about them that leads to confidence and creativity, but how did they come about and why are they called legal blocks? While we may not know the real answer as to why they are yellow, we do know the origin of the margin of a legal block. Around 1900, a local judge asked Holley to add a vertical line on the left side of the paper to create a margin where he could take notes. These edges — also known as descending lines — are always red and 1.25 inches (3.1 centimeters) from the left edge of the page. The stamps made by Holley probably weren`t yellow, and that`s not the only color they`re available in today. The only thing that technically distinguishes the Legal Pad from any other notebook is the « descending lines » or 1.25-inch margins on the left. According to a deep historical dive into legal notebooks in a 2005 issue of Legal Affairs magazine, Holley added these lines « in the early 1900s at the request of a local judge who was looking for space to comment on his own notes. » Comedian Jerry Seinfeld, former national security adviser John Bolton and the late American author Pat Conroy are just a few of his millions of followers. We`re talking about the epitome of Legal Pad office supplies. It`s simple, professional, cheap and instantly recognizable. BRAND: Can you be a legal pad and just be a modest 8 1/2 inches by 11? Dyeing the paper yellow would have been a bad business decision for Holley as it would have raised its prices. For this reason, it is not believed that he was the one who started the tradition of yellow towels.

How did they turn yellow? There is no definitive answer, but many theories. The first is that research in color psychology can support the claim that yellow stimulates the mind. Therefore, yellow was chosen for lawyers because it stimulated their creativity and mental abilities. A second theory is that yellow provides a background that contrasts well with black ink without glare, making text easier to read and giving a professional feel. And a third theory is that Holley or his successors eventually decided to dye the paper to hide the fact that tampons were made from leftovers of different ages and qualities, and that yellow was the cheapest or most readily available dye at the time. Currently, Holley`s monstrous creation is one of the most popular disposable writing surfaces used to capture ideas. However, this may not be the case in the future, as some federal courts have banned legal-sized paper and many private law firms have committed to reducing their paper consumption by switching to digital filing, which can help eliminate a company`s 85,000 paper boxes stored in a warehouse. One of the main distinguishing features of the Legal Pad is the fact that it has specific margins.

The American Pad and Paper Company claims that the edges of a typical legal block contain a 1.25-inch gap on the left side of the paper. MS. SNIDER: And they were also extremely opposed to documents of legal length in terms of space efficiency. Ms. SUZANNE SNIDER (Legal Affairs): Well, legend has it that it was invented around 1888 by Thomas Holley, who was 24 years old at the time and working in a paper mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts. And he had the brilliant idea to collect all kinds, which were a kind of low-quality pieces of paper from different factories, and sew them together to sell them at a reduced rate in the form of napkins. And then it evolved around 1900, when a local judge demanded that a margin be drawn to the left, and this was the first legal block. MS. SNIDER: The funny thing is that you can be a legal block and be almost anything. There are a million permutations of a legal block. You can have a binding sewn, stapled, rubberized, spiral bound, double spiral binding, single border, double border.

You can be white, yellow. They can be junior in size; That`s about 5 times 7. In 1982, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger banned all legal-sized documents from federal courts. It is estimated that this policy has saved millions of dollars in storage space. ALL RIGHT. A legal interview on the history and importance of the yellow legal block, those sunny oversized notebooks favored by lawyers and others. Richard Nixon loved him when he was in the White House. Suzanne Snider researched notepads for an article in the latest issue of Legal Affairs magazine and spoke with our colleague Madeleine Brand. BRAND: Suzanne Snider is an editor for Legal Affairs magazine. His article on the history of the yellow law block is in the current issue. Although its pieces of paper are not yellow, they are at the origin of what has become the legal block.

That Thomas Holly was the one who came up with the idea of including lines in separate sentences is something we`re not sure about. It is likely that blue was simply the color that contrasted best with yellow, and therefore the lines of legal stamps are usually blue. It is certainly more convenient to write these things in different media, so there must be an advantage to using them. Suzanne Snider, a journalist, researched the history of the Legal Pad and explains why it is so valuable to us as a culture. Yet when most people think of Legal Pad, they think of classic yellow paper and blue lines. The true origin of the yellow hue is actually a mystery. As far as we know, Holley`s towels were white, and dyeing them yellow would have increased her costs and ruined her business plan. A notebook (also known as a notebook, notepad, notepad, or legal notebook) is a book or stack of pages of paper often used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling, or other writings, drawings, or scrapbooking.

The legal block was invented by a 24-year-old paper mill worker, Thomas Holley, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, around 1888. Holley got the idea of his frustration because at the end of the day, he had to pick up the tons of leftover low-quality paper that littered the mill. He cut the scraps to the same size and sewed them together to form a uniform pile of papers or blocks. Since the paper was essentially trash for the factory, they were able to sell the tampons at a low price.