Word: shallus
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...Picture Shallus doing the words, "engrossing" the Constitution, as the process was called, copying it out at an elegant angle in large, legible script. The four sheets of parchment were vellum, the skin of a lamb or a calf, stretched, scraped and dried. The ink, a blend of oak galls and dyes. The light, an oil lamp. The instrument, a feather quill. All nature contributing to the assignment, human nature in the form of Jacob Shallus, ordinary American citizen, son of a German immigrant to Philadelphia, soldier, patriot, father of eight and, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, assistant...
...centuries later Shallus becomes history's triviality, his story revived by a scholar, Arthur Plotnik, in a new biography. But the words on paper are given Bicentennial parades. Amazing little artifact. What started out at one man's writing desk eventually journeyed the country from city to city as the nation's capital moved, went into hiding during the War of 1812, was transferred from federal department to department until it wound up in the National Archives in Washington, sanctified in helium and watched over by an electronic camera conceived by NASA. The quill age to the space...