Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren Vogel, bamb Here, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, former
Speaker 1: National security adviser John Bolton, and the late American author
Speaker 1: Pat Conroy are just a few of its millions of devotees.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the quintessential office supply, the legal pad,
Speaker 1: those slightly larger the normal pads of yellow paper with
Speaker 1: horizontal blue lines for writing and a vertical red line
Speaker 1: marking the left margin, and pages that flip on the vertical.
Speaker 1: It's simple, professional, cheap, and instantly recognizable. A part of
Speaker 1: legal pads lure is the air of sophistication about them.
Speaker 1: Legal is right there in the name. These things are
Speaker 1: used by important people for important business, and perhaps the
Speaker 1: most recognizable characteristic of a legal pad that yellow color.
Speaker 1: But why are they yellow? Good question, and I'll warn
Speaker 1: you that this is one of those mysteries of history
Speaker 1: to which the best answer is a but let's look
Speaker 1: into that history. The legal pad was invented by a
Speaker 1: paper mill worker by the name of Thomas Holly in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts around Holly came up with the idea of collecting
Speaker 1: the tons of paper scraps off the floor of the
Speaker 1: mill and stitching them together to make pads of paper.
Speaker 1: Before long, his paper pad invention was a hit. Though
Speaker 1: the paper in his pads was originally white. They were
Speaker 1: so popular that Holly was able to quit his job
Speaker 1: at the mill and form the American Pad and Paper
Speaker 1: Company or am PAD, saving himself from having to pick
Speaker 1: up all those scraps. But back to why legal pads
Speaker 1: are yellow. There are lots of theories about that, but
Speaker 1: no one really knows for sure. Some say they were
Speaker 1: yellow from the beginning, that because the pads were originally
Speaker 1: created using piece together scraps, they looked cheap in low quality,
Speaker 1: so Holly dyed them to make them a classier, more
Speaker 1: uniform yellow. This sounds reasonable, but it's probably not true.
Speaker 1: Dying paper at that time would have been prohibitively expensive
Speaker 1: and not worth cutting into profits. Other theories are from
Speaker 1: a little later, probably after Holly's time. They include the
Speaker 1: idea that yellow is easier on the eyes because it
Speaker 1: doesn't create as much glare as white, and thus yellow
Speaker 1: paper was the obvious way to go. Others have hypothesized
Speaker 1: that yellow paper was beneficial because it didn't show age
Speaker 1: like white paper. Still others think that Holly's pads went
Speaker 1: from white to yellow because of a belief that yellow
Speaker 1: stimulates the mind, including areas of recall and creativity. While
Speaker 1: we may not know the real answer, we do know
Speaker 1: the origin of illegal pad's margin. Around nineteen hundred, a
Speaker 1: local judge asked Polly to add a vertical line down
Speaker 1: the left side of the paper to create a margin
Speaker 1: where he can make notes. Those margins, also known as
Speaker 1: down lines, are always red and drawn one point to
Speaker 1: five inches that's three point one centimeters from the left
Speaker 1: edge of the page. That yellow paper, blue lines, a
Speaker 1: red margin, and a gummed tear off top are all
Speaker 1: required for a pad to qualify as a legal pad.
Speaker 1: Any other colors of paper or printed lines, and that
Speaker 1: pad is not legal. And one last fact for you,
Speaker 1: Supreme Court Justice Warren Burger banned all legal sized documents
Speaker 1: from federal courts. This policy is estimated to have saved
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in storage space. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Meg's Barwick and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: in this and lots of other specific topics, visit how
Speaker 1: Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.