Any classroom contains a dark green or a brown board on the wall with pieces of chalk and felt erasers. It is impossible o imagine a classroom without chalkboards which are also called blackboards. Let us speak about some facts from its history.
The first blackboards cannot be called chalkboards, as they have nothing to do with chalk. Those were just little pieces of slate, and children used another smaller piece of slate to write on this board with. The unnecessary information was erased with a simple rag in order to offer more space for the writing. In the end of the 18th and early 19th century, such slate boards were generally used in schools in the United States of America and other countries. The slate boards were bound in a wooden frame in order to be stronger and safe from cracking. In the end of the 18th and early 19th century one could hardly find and buy paper, so little slate blackboards served as an excellent substitute.
It is said that at some moment these slate boards started to be used in a new way. One geography teacher working in Scotland used to take the slates from his students and hung them on the wall in order to enable all students see what was written there. This was a revolution in blackboard’s history.
The idea of hanging the boards on the wall spread quickly. The first recorded use of slate board in this way was registered in North America in 1801, when this board was used at the United States Military Academy in West Point. Many other academic military schools borrowed this idea too, and is has become rather popular among grammar schools.
Slate was mined in the Northeast of the United States in such places as Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont, and somewhat further to the South of Virginia. As Americans moved to the West, new railroads were built and used to transport slate for blackboards from these states to schools in the Great Plains and spacious prairie lands by the 1840's. Slate has always been important for the Americans and further used in public schools.
By the 1850's, almost all schoolhouses had blackboards with other staples: benches for the students and a wood burning stove. Nevertheless, modern chalkboards were not commonly usage.
With the development of technology the old pieces of slate were replaced by chalk as limestone chalk is softer, more convenient for the usage and easier to clean. The old rag erasers were replaced by new felt chalkboard erasers absorbing more chalk dust and keep it out of the air. Today’s blackboards are made not of slate, but of steel with a porcelain enamel.
In the last twenty years many schools have replaced the usage of chalkboards into whiteboards because of negative effects of chalk dust. However, the blackboards will be used in schools for many years in future.
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