While still a teenager, Newton had learned that even the smallest, cheapest notebook – costing only as much as a loaf of bread – could serve as the repository for all kinds of ideas, juxtaposing them so that connections became apparent, holding data until such time as they might become relevant, preserving calculations and observations without degradation. Always there, and infinitely versatile, it would equip him for investigations into colour, optics, medicine, navigation, phonetics, language, the laws of physics and the torments of his soul.
