My OperaWhere Did The Yearbook Come From
Tuesday, July 24, 2012 2:19:16 PM
Did you know the yearbook we all buy at the end of the school year actually has a very interesting history that dates back to the 1800's? A photographer name George K. Warren from Boston is the father of the yearbook idea.
When George Warren was a photographer in the 1860's and 70's there were mostly men who attended colleges. He decided he would capitalize on this with his talent in photographer. He thought of using the one negative you have when you take a picture of someone and selling it in mass production so that people could pass their pictures out to many people as memories. This started a huge fad that in turn brought about the yearbook idea. The people who collected all of the pictures would then pay to have them bound into a nice book as their school memories to be kept safe and protected. The idea caught on so well that the yearbook later became mass produced with other types of photos included.
It turned out that George Warren had the market on selling these pictures called graduating pictures for about 15 years. Eventually, others saw how good of an idea it was and thought of adding other types of photos to be in one book that would be sold as a book to everyone.
In the Smithsonian museum there is the National Museum of American History which has a section called the Photographic History Collection. In this section of the Smithsonian sits an 1860 yearbook by George Warren from Rutgers in New Jersey.
There is a woman in Bellingham Washington, my home state, who is a used book store owner that says the yearbook actually dates back as early as 1806 when a yearbook was printed for Yale University. These type of yearbooks were actually writings about the school and people, but not yet pictures. She states that she actually started collecting yearbooks around 1988.
This woman from Washington, Darilee Bednar said that as of 2004 she had collected 5900 different yearbooks. She collected 3900 of these yearbooks from Washington state alone. That is one huge collection of books! She managed to collect most of these books from thrift stores at the high price of .97 cents. She does goes into great detail in her speech she had posted online about the different kinds of yearbooks that have come about over the years. It's very interesting to see what the yearbook has become from 1806 to now 2012. It really has developed into a more inclusive, fun memory book, rather than a book of names and senior graduate formal portraits.
I do love the way the yearbook has developed into including pictures of the entire school. I also am happy that in some elementary schools by the mid 1980s they had cool paperback yearbooks for sale. I think this is even a better idea since it's much harder to remember your friends and the way things were in elementary school than it is from high school. Besides, elementary school is where you develop most of your life long study habits, favorite subjects, and sometimes even life long friends. It does seem more logical to me that this time being so influential and fun would be the memories you'd more likely want to preserve. Not that high school was bad for me, it wasn't all bad,but I can say there are more stresses and events that occur in your teenage years that you don't always want to remember. I guess I just think the idea of being able to have a yearbook from either every year of school or at least every school you attend, elementary through high school is a great idea since things change so much within the 12 years we are in school in America.
Interestingly enough I never did think of how the yearbook had come about, but now knowing that a photographer sort of started the movement is comforting. I too am an avid photographer and scrapbooker who knows and understand the difficulty it is to produce great work that gains the appreciation that it should. It is wonderful to me to know that a photographer, George Warren went out on a limb to reproduce mass quantities of one negative of someone in order to continue making a living as a photographer. He never gave up on his passion and talents in photography.
Being that a photographer was part of the year book history really moves me to use my talents to reach for my dreams. Also, knowing that when he made his dream a reality in a time with less tools makes it even more important for me to go for my dreams. I believe the world owes a great honor to George K. Warren for using his talents and coming up with a great idea that stayed around for 100's of years inspiring all to reach for their dreams and keep their memories for history to use in many ways.
To learn more about yearbooks, visit http://www.classmates.com/yearbooks
When George Warren was a photographer in the 1860's and 70's there were mostly men who attended colleges. He decided he would capitalize on this with his talent in photographer. He thought of using the one negative you have when you take a picture of someone and selling it in mass production so that people could pass their pictures out to many people as memories. This started a huge fad that in turn brought about the yearbook idea. The people who collected all of the pictures would then pay to have them bound into a nice book as their school memories to be kept safe and protected. The idea caught on so well that the yearbook later became mass produced with other types of photos included.
It turned out that George Warren had the market on selling these pictures called graduating pictures for about 15 years. Eventually, others saw how good of an idea it was and thought of adding other types of photos to be in one book that would be sold as a book to everyone.
In the Smithsonian museum there is the National Museum of American History which has a section called the Photographic History Collection. In this section of the Smithsonian sits an 1860 yearbook by George Warren from Rutgers in New Jersey.
There is a woman in Bellingham Washington, my home state, who is a used book store owner that says the yearbook actually dates back as early as 1806 when a yearbook was printed for Yale University. These type of yearbooks were actually writings about the school and people, but not yet pictures. She states that she actually started collecting yearbooks around 1988.
This woman from Washington, Darilee Bednar said that as of 2004 she had collected 5900 different yearbooks. She collected 3900 of these yearbooks from Washington state alone. That is one huge collection of books! She managed to collect most of these books from thrift stores at the high price of .97 cents. She does goes into great detail in her speech she had posted online about the different kinds of yearbooks that have come about over the years. It's very interesting to see what the yearbook has become from 1806 to now 2012. It really has developed into a more inclusive, fun memory book, rather than a book of names and senior graduate formal portraits.
I do love the way the yearbook has developed into including pictures of the entire school. I also am happy that in some elementary schools by the mid 1980s they had cool paperback yearbooks for sale. I think this is even a better idea since it's much harder to remember your friends and the way things were in elementary school than it is from high school. Besides, elementary school is where you develop most of your life long study habits, favorite subjects, and sometimes even life long friends. It does seem more logical to me that this time being so influential and fun would be the memories you'd more likely want to preserve. Not that high school was bad for me, it wasn't all bad,but I can say there are more stresses and events that occur in your teenage years that you don't always want to remember. I guess I just think the idea of being able to have a yearbook from either every year of school or at least every school you attend, elementary through high school is a great idea since things change so much within the 12 years we are in school in America.
Interestingly enough I never did think of how the yearbook had come about, but now knowing that a photographer sort of started the movement is comforting. I too am an avid photographer and scrapbooker who knows and understand the difficulty it is to produce great work that gains the appreciation that it should. It is wonderful to me to know that a photographer, George Warren went out on a limb to reproduce mass quantities of one negative of someone in order to continue making a living as a photographer. He never gave up on his passion and talents in photography.
Being that a photographer was part of the year book history really moves me to use my talents to reach for my dreams. Also, knowing that when he made his dream a reality in a time with less tools makes it even more important for me to go for my dreams. I believe the world owes a great honor to George K. Warren for using his talents and coming up with a great idea that stayed around for 100's of years inspiring all to reach for their dreams and keep their memories for history to use in many ways.
To learn more about yearbooks, visit http://www.classmates.com/yearbooks
