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welcome to the cotkey ride home for tuesday, July 27th, 2021. I'm Jackson Bird. Today, the history and future of Billboard advertising. The surprisingly large challenge of recycling bowling balls and the YouTube creator who just got hired by Lucasfilm. Here are some of the

cool things from the news today. Having driven over 30 hours across almost 2,000 miles of

farmland in the American Heartland last week, I had a lot of time to think about

my surroundings. In particular, one ubiquitous item dotting the side of all American motorways.

Not corn, although dang, there was a lot of that, but no, billboards. There are more than

340,000 billboards in the United States, making up a six and a half billion dollar industry.

But for such big business, the product itself really hasn't changed much at all over the last two centuries.

I'm sure there are some digital billboards now, and we had those sort of accordion ones

that could switch between two or three ads back in the 90s, and there's always going to be some

gimmick billboards. Growing up, I always loved passing by the Coors Light billboard on I-35 in Dallas,

which features an actual rock face and functioning waterfall. Andrew Egan, writing at tedium, dug into the history

of the billboard last month. The first billboards, as modern audiences would understand them,

were, like many things, made of stone and created by ancient Egyptians. The purpose of the first

known billboards was not to advertise the first consumer products, but to announce laws outside the city of Thebes, circa 1000 BCE.

Unlike simpler forms of advertising like posters and flyers, which are intended to be viewed up close, billboards seek to attract attention from further away.

Ancient billboards required costly labor and resources that

limited their use to important state business. As a result, billboards have rarely been used

...