SLATES, SLIDE RULERS, AND SOFTWARE--TEACHING MATH IN AMERICA
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Between 1800 and 1860, the number of Americans learning elementary mathematics multiplied as several states established public or common schools to provide basic education.

Swiss educator Johann Pestalozzi argued that students would learn better if they associated ideas with objects and visual images. Many Americans adopted Pestalozzi’s ideas, supplementing rote learning of arithmetic with blackboard drawings, attractive charts, and lessons using objects.
 
Ray's Practical Arithmetic - Click To Enlarge
COVER OF RAY'S PRACTICAL ARITHMETIC

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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From colonial times, American children used slates to write down their work. Slates also were a convenient tool for surveyors and others who worked in the field away from pen and paper. In the 19th and 20th centuries, slates were sometimes sold with numeral frames.

Mathematics teachers with ties to England and France introduced blackboards into the United States around 1800. By the 1840s, these erasable surfaces were used for teaching a wide range of subjects in elementary schools, colleges, and academies. The Massachusetts educator William A. Alcott visited over 20,000 schoolhouses. “A blackboard, in every school house,” he wrote, “is as indispensably necessary as a stove or fireplace.”

 

Teachers used blackboards in lecturing, for setting problems, and for presenting student work. Early blackboards were wood, painted black. From the 1850s, several vendors sold specially formulated “liquid slating” to be used as paint.

More durable and more expensive blackboards were made from natural slate. In the 20th century, compressed wood boards covered with a hardened layer of paint or plastic replaced blackboards of slate.  

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Blackboard from the 1800s - Click To Enlarge
BLACKBOARD


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The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, Behring Center