School Apparatuses This period added a host of school apparatuses to the instructional process. In fact, few new ones were introduced after this until real machines such as the stereoptician, movie projectors, etc., came into use relatively recently. Most of these apparatuses were extremely simple and required very little engineering in their manufacture. And though there was knowledge as to the existence of these items, very few found their way into the average school of the times. In 1830, a lecturer speaking on educational apparatuses made this list of essentials: 19 1. A time-piece 2. Maps and globes 3. The blackboard 4. The abacus or numeral frame He mentioned other things that might be desirable, mostly laboratory equipment: 1. Optical instruments 2. Air-pumps 3. Pneumatic apparatus 4. Steam engines By 1841 a Professor Haskell listing apparatuses in use in New York schools had expanded the list to 32 items: 1. The round text copies, and copies for beginners being on binder's board and varnished. 2. The card for holding the pen. 3. The arithmetical cards of thirteen folio pages. 4. The arithmetical card with movable counters. 5. The five inch globe. 6. The three inch globe. 7. The two and a quarter-inch globe. 8. The globular revolving map of the world. 9. The maps of the United States and Europe. 10. The map of geographical terms. 11. The map to illustrate ancient history. 12. The large map of mountains. 13. The cylindrical revolving Mercator's chart. 14. The card of geometrical figures. 15. The protractor. 16. The machine to illustrate angles, chords, sines, tangents, etc. 17. Geometrical solids. 18. The planetarium. 19. The machine showing the inclination of the orbits of the planets. 20. The Tellurian. 21. A tide globe. 19 Adams, op. cit., pp. 345-346. 22. The machine showing the earth as an oblate spheroid (was simply a globe; but to make it more expensive, it would flatten at the poles when whirled with the finger.) 23. The machine explaining the moon's roads. 24. The cellestial globe. 25. Diagram of the solar system. 26. The frame of pulleys and levers. 27. The machine for showing action and reaction. 28. The intermittent fountain (to demonstrate the phenomena of siphoning.) 29. The machine to show the resistance of the air. 30. The prism. 31. An electrical air-pump and chemical apparatus. 32. A box of family apparatus." As early as 1826, Josiah Holbrook had established an educational exchange in Boston for the sale of school apparatus. It soon developed into the Holbrook School Apparatus Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut. By 1850 the Holbrook Company was well-established and had agencies in several parts of the United States. The Blackboard Origin and Development in United States The blackboard was rather slowly introduced in America. The earliest reference to one was in an arithmetic publication in 1809 in Philadelphia. A footnote explained that "the Black Board should be about 3 feet square, painted or stained with ink, and hung against the wall in a convenient place for a class to assemble around it." 21 It seems that it was introduced in different parts of the country about the same time but independent of each other. Samuel J. May, an educational reformer in Boston schools, reports his first acquaintance with the blackboard. . in the winter of 1813-1814. . I attended a mathematical school kept in Boston . . . on entering his room, we were struck at the appearance of an ample Blackboard suspended 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. There it was-forty-two years ago that I first saw what now I trust is considered indispensable in every school-the blackboard." " Mr. May in turn introduced the blackboard to the Common Schools of Massachusetts. The blackboard was introduced to West Point Military Academy in 20 Connecticut Common School Journal, Feb. 1841, pp. 99–100. 21 Johnson, op. cit., p. 107. American Journal of Education, Vol. 16 (1866), pp. 140-141. 1817 by Claude Crozet, who had been an ex-officer under Napoleon, then appointed to the Academy as professor of engineering. When he arrived at the school, he found to his amazement that there were no textbooks in English. Thus he was faced with the problem of teaching a new science without a textbook, and he himself unfamiliar with the English language. Crozet solved the problem with the aid of a carpenter and painter who turned out the first blackboard to be used in that part of the country.23 In the 1820's a knowledge, if not the use, of the blackboard seems to have disseminated to other schools. In 1820 Joseph Felt, in his Annals of Salem (Vol. 1, p. 469) said: "Blackboards were used in our Common Schools for arithmetical calculations." An 1823 Report of the School Committee for Boston said: "They [arithmetic exercises] are afterwards drawn by the pupil on the blackboard." " A blackboard was introduced into Bowdoin College in 1824 by a Professor Smyth. "That novelty, let me say, made a sensation. . . . The blackboard caused an important change in the manner of teaching generally." 25 In the 1830's educators stopped regarding the blackboard as a curious innovation and began to look upon it as essential to teaching. A lecturer in 1830 listed it as one of four essential apparatuses every school should have. One or more of these should be found in every school . . . This piece of school-furniture is almost invaluable. In some schools it has been deemed so important as to form part of the WALL, all around the room. 26 The Connecticut Common School Journal of February 15, 1839, advised its schools: "In all the operations performed by the pupils ... blackboards should be used for demonstrations and illustrations." 27 In the same journal, 28 a letter from a teacher ventured that "the most useful piece of school apparatus, may be simply a black board painted or stained black, attached to the wall or to a movable stand. . . . It is employed in teaching scholars of every stage of advancement." By the 1840's the blackboard was firmly entrenched in the school systems. Texts for teachers on the use of the blackboard began to be written. A few quotes from one of these 29 shows us, possibly with some ex Loc. cit., Vol. 13 (1863), pp. 31-38. Fletcher B. Dresslar, "Blackboards”, Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. 1, p. 391. Adams, op. cit., pp. 345-346. (Emphasis is author's own.) Connecticut Common School Journal, p. 92. Ibid., Oct. 1839, pp. 48-49. Josiah F. Bumstead, The Blackboard in the Primary Schools, Boston, Perkins & Marvin, 1841, pp. VII & VIII, respectively. (Emphasis is the author's.) aggeration, that teachers were convinced that the blackboard was here to stay. I should feel in the school-room, without the blackboard, as though the LAST PLANK had been taken from under me! And again: The inventor or introducer of the blackboard system deserves to be ranked among the best contributors to learning and science, if not among the greatest benefactors of mankind. In 1842, the Connecticut Common School Journal dedicated five entire issues including illustrations to "Slate and Black Board Exercises for Common Schools." Technological State of Blackboards, 1800-1850 Most all blackboards were constructed in a similar manner until about 1850. The hyloplate and slate blackboard was a product of the last half of the 19th century. These were made either commercially or by the local carpenter since little machinery was involved. The blackboards were usually made of wood painted or stained black and were either attached to movable frames or hung on walls. Local teachers often made their own blackboards, so urged by School Journals: 30 Now the word BLACK BOARD need not awaken in our mindes the thought of anything difficult, rare, or costly. Why it is simply a black BOARD. Is there any difficulty in painting a piece of board black? The writer went on to describe the process: plane the board until it is smooth and soft; then apply black paint or stain. He advised that the whole end of the school room could be painted black. Plaster mixtures colored with a dark black or green dye were also used. Slates The origin of the slate reaches far back into antiquity. Its predecessors were the wax tablets used by the Greeks and Romans and the black wax tablet used by the Hindus around 1000 A.D. The modern slate seems to have been in common use in Europe by the 1400's. Chaucer makes the first allusion to it in English in his Astrolabe II (p. 44), "enter hit in-to thy slate.” 31 30 Connecticut Common School Journal, Feb. 1842, p. 50. (Emphasis is the author's.) Louis C. Karpinski, "Slate," Cyclopedia of Education, Vol. V, p. 341. Slates were slowly introduced into American schools. Although there are some allusions to them in the colonial period,32 it was not until the 1800's that they were commonly used. In William B. Fowle's report to the trustees of the Boston Monitorial School in 1825, he says: "Every child in school is furnished with a slate and pencil, which are considered a part of the furniture of the school." An article in the Connecticut Common School Journal of 1839 on "The Use of Slates" advises, "We can hardly recommend any experiments or methods more likely to succeed, than slate exercises." 33 By the 1840's, slates were as commonly used in schools as the blackboard. Strangely enough, there appears to be no connection between the spread of the slate and the blackboard. Globes Globes and Maps The use of globes in schools was nothing new; some schools in colonial days possessed them. But, for the first time, they began to be regarded as essential items in the well-equipped school. Adams listed them as the second of four essential apparatus for the classroom in 1830: 2., Maps and Globes,-and in general, any other apparatus, provided it be simple and cheap, which helps to explain the phenomena of the earth.” The same writer gives an enlightening description of the plight of the student in those days who tried to grasp the conception of a round earth without the assistance of a globe. He recalls that as a boy without this visual aid, he imagined the earth as "a hollow ballhalf filled with earth, upon the level surface of which, he himself was standing, while the shell around him formed the sky!" But the writer went on to explain that he thought this to be relatively sophisticated as he felt most children understood the globe to be a circular plane! 5 Other educators hailed the globe as an indispensable teaching implement. A writer in 1841 opinioned that the terrestrial and celestial globes "are two articles of school apparatus, which nothing of the kind can supersede." 36 Every company that handled any kind of school apparatus always included globes, regardless of the size of his stock. 39 A letter from a New England schoolboy to his father in 1752 asks him to send, among other things, his "slate and som pensals." Connecticut Common School Journal, p. 78. 34 Adams, op. cit., p. 345. 25 Ibid. 36 A. Fleming, "On the Use of the Globes in Teaching Geography and Astronomy," American Institute of Instruction (Aug. 1841), Lecture VII, p. 164. |