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