It was an unusually cold night in the Friedman Study Center when Arnold Baker, a singularly lonely Brown freshman, began his friendship with the oft-ignored paperclip assistant from the word processing application Microsoft Word.
"It all started with a letter," recounted Baker of their first meeting "It was a thank you note for my grandmother, he immediately recognized what I was writing and wanted to know if he could help me format it." Stunned by this unsolicited generosity, Baker and the paperclip, named Clippy, spent the next 20 minutes composing a "first-rate" thank-you card, complete with proper margins and a decorative border.