The idea of bulletin board is very old:
Ancient Athens had an official bulletin board (the
Monument of the Eponymous Heroes) in the 5th century
BC. The messages were posted on white boards (
leukomata) and included temporary notices: the lists of
epheboi, mobilization lists, legislation proposals, announcements of prosecutions. Similar whiteboards,
tabula dealbata, were used for notices in
Ancient Rome. In the
Middle Ages, with availability of paper, church doors became community bulletin boards. • 1801:
James Pillans,
headmaster and geography teacher at the Old High School in
Edinburgh, Scotland, is credited with inventing the first modern
blackboard. • 1925: George Brooks of
Topeka, Kansas is issued a patent for the use of corkboard as a bulletin board which you could stick tacks into. The patent for George Brooks' invention, which would become a mainstay in homes and offices around the world, expired in 1941, which then allowed anyone to create and market their own versions of the product. • 1940: George E. Fox, received a patent for a foam rubber pinboard with
cardboard backing • 1959: W.F. Lewis is issued a patent for a combined chalkboard and bulletin board. • 1978: The concept of the bulletin board entered the
information age when software developers
Ward Christensen and
Randy Suess launched the first public dialup
bulletin board system. • 2010:
Digital signage displays started to replace bulletin boards as a means to reduce clutter and provide real-time information. • 2010:
Pinterest, a content and photo-sharing website meant to serve as online personal bulletin boards, is founded by
Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and
Evan Sharp. • 2017: General Enchantment is issued a utility patent for a physical electronic bulletin board system, that includes a physical writing or pinning surface and an electronic display, like a
mobile computing device (
tablet computer), capable of running (
digital signage) software that augments the sharing of analogue information with digital content. ==See also==