Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Chester Minor was a Yale-trained surgeon and former military officer confined to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane who became one of the most prolific contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary. He developed a quotation-tracking system to submit slips on specific words in response to editors' requests.
The Philological Society formally adopted the idea of creating the Oxford English Dictionary on the 7th of January 1858. This decision followed a report by Richard Chenevix Trench that identified seven shortcomings in contemporary dictionaries.
James Murray worked in a corrugated iron outbuilding called the Scriptorium that was lined with wooden planks and 1,029 pigeon-holes for quotation slips. The Scriptorium served as the heart of the dictionary's creation where the collective efforts of volunteers and editors converged.
The first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary covering words from A to Ant was published on the 1st of February 1884. This initial publication cost 12s 6d and sold only 4,000 copies.
The first electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary became available in 1988. The online version of the dictionary subsequently launched in 2000.
The third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is expected to be completed in 2037. This edition is being developed exclusively in electronic form and aims to double the dictionary's size.