From slates to marker boards

(AP) -- The common school blackboard, first used widely in the United States in the mid-1800s, was a European import, said Peggy Kidwell, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.

It became popular as U.S. "common schools" arose, rooted in the belief that they could educate large numbers of students, not just a few sitting with their handheld slates.

Kidwell, who has written a short history of school chalkboards, said that while early models were often simply wooden boards painted black -- a bit of grit mixed in with the paint made them easier to write on -- slate quarries in the late 1800s began shipping large pieces via railroad.

One of the first schools to use large slate boards was the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

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The first American teachers to use blackboards found them helpful in relieving the tedium of writing out sets of math problems for each student, Kidwell said.

Now that schools are equipped with computers, scanners, copiers and overhead projectors, it's hard to imagine what a revolution the humble chalkboard was.

Kidwell recounts the story of a French priest visiting a Boston school in 1814, who remarked that he was "struck by the appearance of an ample Blackboard" hanging on the wall, with lumps of chalk on a ledge below and cloths hanging at either side. "I had never heard of such a thing before," he said.

Slate blackboards dominated the classroom until the 1960s, when schools began installing steel boards coated with porcelain enamel.

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