Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Federal Register system of publication was created on the 26th of July 1935. Congress passed the Federal Register Act to centralize government announcements that had previously scattered across various agency bulletins.
Each daily issue of the printed Federal Register is organized into four categories including Presidential Documents, Rules and Regulations, Proposed Rules, and Notices. A typical day features executive orders signed by the president alongside proposed regulations from agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency.
An agency publishes a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking or NPRM that requests public input on a draft regulation before finalizing the rule. The issuing agency considers all received comments and includes a discussion of those public concerns when publishing its final version in the Federal Register.
The Federal Register has been available online since 1994. In April 2009 Citation Technologies created a free searchable website covering articles from 1996 to the present and the Federal Register 2.0 website went live on the 25th of July 2010.
There are no copyright restrictions on the Federal Register because it is a work of the U.S. government. Any person may reproduce or republish without restriction any material appearing in regular or special editions.