In 1856, Harper's Magazine listed several advantages of this new technique in a review of Draper's book:

1. Only a photograph produced the necessary sharpness of a microscoped object required by an artist to copy microscoped objects accurately for a copper cut.

2. The European anatomists for some time had possessed large, excellent charts of medical science. But because of their complexity, it was impossible to copy them on a reduced scale for textbook illustrations. But with the aid of photographic-reduction, the printer could cheaply make copper cuts so that the student could have the advantages of these masterpieces of science.

3. Photography could reproduce with permanent accuracy scientific objects which "very soon spoil and even become disgusting." To illustrate this, the magazine showed a copper cut reproduction of the photo of the digestive tract of a chicken.49

Abundance of Textbooks

After this short survey of the textbook movement during this period, it should be obvious that significant progress had been made in this field. Superior technological changes had been introduced, and the textbook industry had become a mass production operation.

But mass production technique brought new problems to the schools and added to the number of educational critics. As early as 1839, an educational journal recognized that "no complaint is more common than that which is made against the variety of school books." 50

A critic writing in 1852 unleashed his wrath about the over-abundance of texts flooding the schools thusly:

The houses of many of us are overflowing with the results of this misdirected industry and mercantile enterprise, so that not a few of us are obliged to refuse admission to any further specimens of school literature. . . . There can be no justification for the flood of dreary looking productions that are conveyed in the carpet-bags of courteous agents from town to town.51 However, his solution to what was actually a worthwhile revolution in education was lacking in constructive realism.

The temptation to manufacture schoolbooks is just now very strong, but it must be manfully encountered, like any other temptation."

This is reminiscent of some modern-day educators who vigorously oppose new technological innovations in education without offering any realistic alternative solution to the problem involved.

40 "On the Application of Photography to Printing," Harper's Magazine (New York), Vol. LXXVI (Sept. 1856), pp. 433-441.

50 Connecticut Common School Journal (Jan. 1839), p. 50.

51 "School and College Text-Books," The Christian Examiner, Boston, Vol. LIII, Nov. 1852, p. 426.

52 Ibid., p. 426.

Part III

CIVIL WAR TO 1900

BEGINNING IN THE 1860's, technological developments spawned in war and nurtured in peacetime-resulted in improvements in communication, power, and transportation. A new and powerful nation based primarily and necessarily on industrialization was emerging. However, these technological advances actually had little impact on education at this time. Few new instructional devices were introduced. It was mainly a period of polishing and streamlining what already existed, though mass production methods did lower prices and extend the benefits of existing apparatuses to more areas.

Attitude Toward Educational Technology

A significant evolution in attitude occurred during this period. The new educational apparatuses introduced before the 1860's, once regarded as novelties, now were regarded as necessary educational implements. An education journal of 18701 sums up the attitude that prevailed.

It is an important part of the duty of those who have charge of our schools to provide them with suitable apparatus. Houses and teachers are indispensable; but good apparatus is scarcely less so. Let our teachers have proper implements to work with-then we may reasonably expect work to be done.

This attitude was so widely accepted that the states passed legal statutes to enforce it. Section 56 of the Virginia School Law of 1882 read: "No school district shall receive any part of the funds unless it has made provisions for school-houses, furniture, apparatus, textbooks for indigent children and all other means and appliances needed.” 2 The 1887 School Laws of Oregon stated:

3

Apparatus

10. Globes, charts, numeral frames, outline maps, paper, text-books, cube and square root blocks are necessary appliances for the efficient management of every school.

a The American Education Monthly (New York), Vol. VII (1870), p. 420.

2 The Education Journal of Virginia (Richmond, Va.), Vol. XIII (June 1882), p. 240.

U.S. Bureau of Education, Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1886, p. 206.

Furniture

11. Among the indispensable articles of furniture are a few chairs, a teacher's table, a black-board and crayons, etc.

Dissemination of Knowledge About Educational Technology

When something becomes common knowledge, it ceases to be a novelty. This accounts in part for the change in attitude in educational technology mentioned above. There were several factors working during this period which brought the latest information on school equipment to even the most rural schools.

After 1860, there was a veritable flood of new educational publications in Journals, Reviews, and Weeklies. The States began to publish their own educational journals to keep their teachers informed. The larger cities might publish four or five such journals, hoping for nation-wide consumption. This wave of educational "intelligence," as the exchange of ideas on education was called in these journals, is especially interesting from the viewpoint of this study. Articles were carried regularly on the latest ideas in school equipment, and the publications were usually crammed full of advertisements from the school furniture and apparatus companies. Their enticing illustrations and glowing sales claims probably went far in persuading teachers that the newest in educational apparatus was a basic necessity.

Also during this period, the International Exhibitions did much to disseminate knowledge on more than just a local basis. It became the standard practice after the World's Fair in London in 1851, to include educational exhibits representing the latest in educational technology and methods from the different nations. The most important exhibitions were, in Paris, 1855; London, 1862; Paris, 1867; Vienna, 1873; Philadelphia, 1876, and Paris, 1878. Also containing important educational exhibits were, the Health Exhibition, London, 1884, and the World's Industrial Centennial and Cotton Exposition, New Orleans, 1885.

The impact of these educational exhibitions was important. For example, at the Centennial Exhibition (Philadelphia, 1876) the exhibits from the technical schools of Moscow and Petersburg so impressed President Runkle of M.I.T., that he obtained the exhibits and used them as the basis for the first laboratory system in U.S. Schools. In other cases, the exhibitions were displayed at libraries and museums

Richard Waterman, Jr., "Educational Exhibits at the Columbian Exposition," Educational Review (New York), Vol. VII (1894), p. 122.

throughout the world. The U.S. Bureau of Education formed an exhibit from the objects left by the Centennial Exhibition.

Opposition to Advancing Educational Technology

As can be expected, this period had its feet-draggers. Many felt the new educational apparatuses to be so complicated as to be completely beyond their ability. Even the simple innovation of object teaching as a visual aid was criticized on this ground:

A practical objection will occur to everyone—the disqualification of the majority of teachers to use the system. It is above them. It is too high a kind of instruction. It requires more available knowledge, tact, and experience than most teachers can command. We are not all Arnolds or Manns."

Others had nightmares of the schools being converted into educational factories, where the teacher would be little more than a mechanic manipulating educational apparatuses. A speaker before the New York State Teachers Association voiced this opinion in 1870:

The old-time schoolhouse . is giving place to finer buildings . . we have improved desks and settees, improved maps and charts, improved slates and globes, and improved textbooks. . . . We are certainly far in advance of anything in our past, and are said to be far in advance of other nations.

But just here, it seems to me, in the line of our greatest excellence, lies our greatest defect and our greatest danger. In looking so closely after the mechanism of education, we have lost something of the life and spirit of our teaching. Our methods are . . . mechanical and superficial. . . . So long as people like showy mechanism in our schools, so long they will have it. This idea of showmanship instead of utilitarian value in the educational apparatus of the day had some ground. As was noticed earlier, few really new instructional apparatuses were introduced; most of the manufacturing companies simply refined what had been used a few decades previously. Thus when a certain point of refinement was reached, a period of stagnation followed. Many educators felt that the apparatuses were used more as prestige or status symbols by the schools than as implements for teaching. One writer voiced this opinion:

Instructors use [apparatuses].

as a means of drawing patronage, by publishing in a marked manner, the cost of their apparatus. If their valuations are true (and they are often to be doubted), they usually in

The American Education Monthly, Vol. III (Jan. 1806), p. 22. •The American Education Monthly, Vol. X (Apr. 1873), p. 151.

"The Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education for 1872, published, for the first time, statistics on patents in school furniture, apparatus, etc. It listed 134 patents and almost every one of them was simply an improvement on some apparatus already in use, such as the blackboard, etc.

clude the cost of every article purchased since the school was founded, whether it now has any value or utility. Examine the apparatus of most of our academies, and you will not find one in five where one-half of the instruments are in working order.

The following is a brief description of some of the technological advances made in education during this period and their impact, if any, on the education system as a whole.

School Architecture

After the Civil War, a wave of prosperity swept over the North. This gave rise to a new and ornate type of architecture for school buildings. The main architectural innovation during the decade after the Civil War was the introduction of more space and comfort and a trend away from the austere if not severe appearance of the past. At the World Exhibition in Vienna in 1873, the United States displayed a full-sized schoolhouse. Foreigners noted that its 11,583 cubical feet of internal space (for 48 children or 241.31 cubic feet per child) made it far more spacious than any other classrooms exhibited. The Austrian report gave a good description of the .inside:

The house had separate entrances, on opposite sides . . . with small halls for taking off the walking garments. The uncommonly high and airy room received its light through six narrow, high windows. . . . The blinds, which could be moved and rolled up in any direction, were most efficient.10

The British remarked on the "elegance and comfort" of American school architecture. Their report said, "Austerity and gloom are too often the leading features of our school system, and it would doubtless be a progressive step to borrow a little of the American amenity." 11

In the 1880's, the so-called "Queen Anne" or hard-pine style came into vogue. Even more ornate, it equipped the school building with towers, spires, gothic windows and wooden scroll work. Badly proportioned and meaningless ornaments were attached outside. Inside, internal balconies, pillars, winding stairs and elaborate mural decorations made the schoolhouse one of the most imposing edifices of the community.12

8 The American Education Monthly, Vol. III (Apr. 1866), pp. 134–135.

Great Britain Royal Commission, Reports on the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873, London, H. M. Stationery Office, 1874, Vol. III, p. 593.

10 U.S. Commissioners, Reports on the International Exhibitions Held at Vienna, 1873, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1876, Vol. X (Foreign abstracts), p. 440. 11 Great Britain, op. cit., p. 593.

1 May Ayres, "A Century of Progress in Schoolhouse Construction," American School Board Journal, Vol. 54 (1919), p. 25.