They were the front stage of the classroom, an essential chunk of wall space that was perhaps the teacher’s most versatile tool. You loved them – you hated them – you cleaned them. For better or worse, every student couldn’t help but become well acquainted with the blackboard.

To understand the importance of the blackboard, one must take a moment and imagine a time before technology, when teachers had the unique challenge of teaching a room full of students with no way to display information. Paper and writing utensils were often scarce and yet, the only way a teacher could present an example to an entire class (such as a math equation) was to hand write it out for each student. Not exactly the most efficient way to spend your time. At the turn of the 19^th century, a man in Scotland named James Pillans began using the blackboard in his classroom. Around the same time, George Baron began using one in the United States to educate cadets at West Point. For the first time, a teacher could easily convey an idea to an entire room full of students at once, making blackboards a groundbreaking innovation that left other methods in the dust. The fact that they could be reused over and over meant that a lot of money could be saved on paper.

Originally, blackboards were made of slate and were, indeed, black. Their rough texture allowed chalk, which is basically compressed dust, to adhere to them. They were relatively easy to clean and chalk was very cost effective. In the 1960s, blackboards began being manufactured from steel and coated with porcelain enamel. Black boards also gave way to green boards, due to the fact that they were easier to erase and keep clean. Different colors of chalk also began appearing, opening a whole bunch of new presentation possibilities.

There is no short supply of blackboard memories in the typical school classroom. It’s hard to forget that feeling in your stomach when you were called to solve a math problem or correctly spell a word in front of the entire class who were salivating over the possibility of being able to ridicule you. To make matters at worse, whoever was writing on the blackboard, be it student or teacher, had the unfortunate disadvantage of having their back turned away from the restless natives in the seats. A fair share of anarchy occurred during these moments, unless your teacher was one of the lucky ones, endowed with the mythical “eyes in the back of his/her head,” a phenomenon science has yet to explain.

And certainly everyone can recall the hand cramps that accompanied a particularly effective form of discipline. If you are drawing a blank on this, perhaps the words “I will not talk in class” ring a bell. Whether it was a hundred times or a thousand, being forced to write any phrase repeatedly at the blackboard, all while standing, was a punishment one soon didn’t forget.

The versatile blackboard also served as a faithful screen for everything from movies to overhead projections. It was also one big sticky note, a place to make formal announcements of test dates and list homework assignments. Oh, and it also could easily become an implement of torture. The inimitable screech of nails across a blackboard is enough to make certain people squirm in discomfort, some to the point of temporary insanity.

Today, in a world filled with personal computers, high-speed printers and Powerpoint demonstrations, the blackboard still hasn’t become obsolete. It’s a tried and true instrument for passing along information that made every teacher’s job considerably more efficient and made each of us aware of every little muscle in our hand, throbbing in unison and giving us a lesson we would never forget.