The Origins of Facebook
Note to the reader: While cleaning out my attic I stumbled across some items from my college days when I spent a lot of time in the stacks of the Bobst Library. Always fascinated by old books (and, I must admit, the aromatic allure of old paper) I would search out the dark corners of the stacks where some of the oldest items were stored. A few times I found typed documents folded between the pages of a book or bound volume of periodicals. Silently invoking the law of “finders keepers,” I took these documents as souvenirs, put them away in a box and forgot about them. But now, having rediscovered them, I felt that they would be of interest to this blog’s readers. Therefore, on a periodic basis, I will post the scanned pages. (You can see another scanned document here.)
Today’s Finding: Look at the title of the scanned page below. Seems that others had the idea for Facebook. In fact, the digital Facebook that we are familiar with is based on a print book known as “face book.” It contains information on all of the faculty and students at Phillips Exeter Academy. Though FDR had attended a different private school – I believe it was Groton – perhaps they had a similar ‘face book’ tradition. – Jeff
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