Notebook
A notebook is a virgin
book of
paper on which
notes may be
written. It was invented in 1920 by Australian J. A Birchall, who first stuck paper together and added a cardboard backing, rather than leaving it to be loose leaf. The paper may be blank or include pre-printed horizontal and/or vertical lines to assist the writer in keeping the text straight. While many people use notepads in their daily lives, they are most commonly associated with
students, who often carry individual notebooks in order to take notes for different courses they take in
school.
Encyclopedia
A
notebook is a virgin
book of
paper on which
notes may be
written. It was invented in 1920 by Australian J. A Birchall, who first stuck paper together and added a cardboard backing, rather than leaving it to be loose leaf. The paper may be blank or include pre-printed horizontal and/or vertical lines to assist the writer in keeping the text straight. While many people use notepads in their daily lives, they are most commonly associated with
students, who often carry individual notebooks in order to take notes for different courses they take in
school.
Artists often use large notebooks which include wide spaces of blank paper appropriate for
drawing.
Lawyers are also known for using rather large notebooks frequently known as
legal pads that contain lined paper and are appropriate for use on tables and
desks. These horizontal lines or "rules" are sometimes classified according to their space apart with "wide rule" the farthest, "college rule" closer, "legal rule" slightly closer and "narrow rule" closest, allowing more lines of text per page. When sewn into a pasteboard backing, these may be called composition books, or in smaller signatures may be called "blue books" or exam books and used for essay exams. In contrast,
journalists prefer small, hand-held notebooks for portability , and sometimes use
shorthand when taking notes.
Scientists and other researchers use lab notebooks to document their experiments. The pages in lab notebooks are sometimes
graph paper to make it easier to plot data.
It is frequently cheaper to purchase notebooks that are
spiral-bound, meaning that a
spiral of
wire is looped through large perforations at the top or side of the page. Other
bound notebooks are available that use
glue to hold the pages together; this process is commonly referred to as "padding" . Today it is common for pages in such notebooks to include a thin line of perforations that make it easier to tear out the page. Spiral-bound pages can be torn out but frequently leave thin scraggly strips from the small amount of paper that is within the spiral, as well as an uneven rip along the top of the torn-out page. A
moleskine notebook includes a
sewn spine that allows it to lie flat.
Since the late
20th century, many attempts have been made to integrate the simplicity of a notebook with the editing and searching abilities of a
computer.
Laptop computers began to be called
notebooks when they reached a relatively small size in the
1990s, but they did not have any special note-taking ability.
Personal digital assistants came next, integrating small
liquid crystal displays with a
touch-sensitive layer to input graphics and written text.
Tablet PCs are considerably larger and provide more writing and navigation space. The fictional
PADD of
Star Trek is frequently seen as inspiration for PDAs and tablet PCs, but the first PADD was seen in "
Encounter at Farpoint" in 1987,
after the first flat calculator-like PDA was made in 1978.
See also
