CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — When the doors to the U.S. Post Office/Federal Judicial Center opened in 1932 in downtown Clarksburg, some patrons probably arrived in a Ford Model A, walked inside and then lit up a Lucky Strike using a newfangled contraption, the Zippo lighter.

Six years later, deep in the heart of the Great Depression, the judge’s staff and the lawyers may have gathered in chambers to talk law and shoot the breeze around another new contraption, the first instant coffee maker. And then, once court was in session, they signed some legal documents with the just-patented ballpoint pen.

Instead of computers and the internet, law clerks had to search through stacks of law books.

And court reporters who today wouldn’t go anywhere without a computer and a digital recorder would have been

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