This is backstory. I'm Peter Onov. They gave up on me. But I've been deaf since I was three.

So I didn't listen. This is Derek Coleman, former Seattle Seahawks fullback, doing the voiceover for a stirring bit of cinematography.

And now I'm here with a lot of fans in the NFL. Cheer me on.

But this is no documentary. It's a commercial for DuraSel batteries from the 2014 Super Bowl.

Today on backstory, the ad industry in America will hear how advertisers perfected the art of the Seahawksel, the catchy jingle, and the association with all American heroes.

Plus ads for backstory that you asked us to produce.

This history is moving fast people. Don't delay. A history of advertising today on backstory.

Major funding for backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation.

From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory with the American History Guys.

Welcome to the show. I'm Brian Ballow. I'm Peter Onov.

And I'm Ed Ayers. Now, if you're listening to this show on the radio, you probably heard Peter do something a few minutes ago that we in the business refer to as a billboard.

It's a one minute tease, apparently effective, for the rest of the show. Complete with highlights, some big questions for the hour, some catchy music, and it's basically an attempt to razzle dazzle you in the sticking with us through the news break.

Well, that radio billboard has its roots in the pre-redeo age. And like a lot of what we talk about on backstory, it dates back to the last few decades of the 19th century.

You know, there are banners, there are posters for circuses and other celebrations.

This is Kathy Goudus, a historian in California who has written about advertising's early days.

A lot of it centered on East Coast cities, but had a certain wild west sensibility to it.

Picture roving wagons covered with enormous ads. I tinderant men with sandwich boards or ads in their hats.

Gangs of billpostures prowling the streets with buckets of wheat paste and broadsides announcing all manner of products and events.

Everywhere you looked, Goudus says somebody would be trying to razzle dazzle you into seeing the benefits of what they had to sell.

You might have a series of text-based hand bills or theater programs. They look like theater programs.

And they're slathered on the exteriors of the buildings at street level.

But then as you sort of almost look up the side of the building, the ads become larger and more pictorial until you get to the top of the building where an electrically illuminated ad is outlined.

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