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The first blackboard used in a school was in Philadelphia in 1809. Early blackboards were made from pine lumber and covered with a mixture of egg white and carbon from charred potatoes. Teachers and students wrote with chunks of chalk and erased with cloth rags. When slate boards became available, teachers used cylinders or white, soft chalk and a felt eraser. These blackboards and slate boards were laborious apparatuses, and the accompanying chalk dust was the bane of all teachers.