The legal pad got its start with Thomas Holley in 1888. Holley was 24 and working at a paper mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Every day, he and his co-workers threw out a lot of scrap pieces, called ...

It began life as a humble collection of paper scraps — now, the yellow-lined legal pad is a must-have for writers, musicians, and of course lawyers. Madeleine Brand talks about the history of the ...