Long Live the Yellow Pad

Here's an interesting story about the good old yellow legal pad. Some of you lawyers out there might enjoy this - perhaps even you non-lawyers.

Once used only by law students and lawyers, the yellow legal pad is now employed to a degree unrivaled in stationery. "End career as a fighter," President Richard Nixon wrote on a legal pad in August 1974. Five days later, on the top of another one, he scratched, "Resignation Speech." Jeff Tweedy, front man for the rock band Wilco, writes his songs on a legal pad. Jim Harrison, the laureate of the untamed heart, wrote Legends of the Fall on legal pads; Elmore Leonard writes his crime novels on them. Nonfiction criminals, it appears, are fond of them, too. How did they get so popular? And how so yellow?

Via Kottke.