His team began transcribing information from the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED) on to slips of paper.

They plugged away for more than a decade, and disaster almost struck in 1978 when the building housing the only copy of their work caught fire.

The entire building was gutted, but the slips remained intact because they were stored in metal filing cabinets.

After that the slips were written in triplicate and stored in three different locations.

As technology developed, the work in progress was microfilmed, and eventually computers were used.

wow, must've been a painful birth....

I hope they'll put it online, 'cause I'd love to see it, but am sure I could never afford a copy and don't think my local library system will pop for it either.