The Early Republic |
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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.”
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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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