By G.C.THRONLEY

A man in ancient Greece who possessed a good pair of legs and a strong voice had a chance of employment in the advertising business. The shopkeepers of long ago, like many others since, discovered that they sold more if they called attention to their goods, and this was especially true if the shop was not in one of the busiest streets and would not easily be noticed. These tradesmen, therefore, sometimes employed a crier to walk through the city, calling out the news that certain goods were for sale in a certain shop. The same custom has gone on for thousands of years and has not yet died out.

But even in early days it was not only the human voice that was used in advertisement. It is believed that signboards were used three or four thousand years ago in China, and tradesmen also made use of them in Egypt, Greece and Rome. These boards could be placed in front of shops to show what kinds of goods were sold there. The ancient signs of a wine-merchant and of a shoemaker have been found in Italy, and there must have been many others.

The shoemaker's sign was a picture of Cupid, the God of love, holding a. pair of ladies' shoes. A picture of two men holding a vessel of wine was the sign of an inn at Pompeii in Italy. Such signs were useful because they could be understood even by those who were unable to read. In Roman times too the different kinds of public baths were advertised by notices written up on walls at the sides of streets. Plays were advertised in the same way, and the Romans had a kind of daily newspaper (Called Acta Diurna - Daily Doings) which gave information about such things as marriages and deaths, speeches, the results of races, official news and laws. This was put up every day in a public place on a white board, where it stayed for a reasonable time. After being taken down, it was kept as a record of events, a record which was continued until the seat of government moved

from Rome to Constantinople (Istanbul). It was more of a newspaper than an advertiser, though it did contain a few private notices.

The public criers employed by the traders of ancient days were also a common sight in early England. These town criers were sometimes known as bellmen, because they carried bells as they walked through the streets, ringing them loudly to call attention to themselves, and then shouting out their information. This was a fairly effective way of advertising in these days when few people could read, and bellmen with powerful voices were more useful than the written word. The shopkeepers themselves used their own strong voices in the market place, all shouting together as loudly as possible to make themselves heard above the terrible noise made by the others. A man who lives in a modern city often complains of noise, but he is wrong if he thinks that it is a new problem in the world.

As in the past, the efforts of the town crier were helped by trade signs in England and other European countries. Sign language could easily be understood and therefore could reach a wide and uneducated public. Signboards with pictures on them were placed or hung in front of shops. They were often roughly painted, but some were of high artistic value. Men like Hogarth might be asked to paint the boards; the tradesmen had to pay a lot more for such work, but the extra trade that came this way increased his profits.

These boards helped the buyer as well as the shopkeeper. At a time when neither houses nor shops were numbered, it was not very easy to find a place one wanted. A man who wished to buy some new chairs might have difficulty in finding the right shop unless he knew the town well. But if he looked along a street and saw a board with a chair painted on it, he knew where to go. In the eighteenth century Thomas Chippendale, the famous maker of furniture, had his place of business in London at the sign of The Chair.

The shopkeeper who had a large and artistic board usually did more business than the man with a small and uninteresting board which might not be noticed. Boards therefore became bigger; and to allow them to be seen from far away, the shopkeepers hung them on holders sticking out from the walls of shops. Signboards were especially common outside inns.

In the fourteenth century in England there was a law according to which every innkeeper had to show his sign whether he wanted to

do so or not; and in 1393 an innkeeper was arrested and taken to court for failing to do this. But most tradesmen and innkeepers were glad to show their signs and took a pride in them. Even the holders on which they were hung were often made of beautifully-formed ironwork. Some of this still remain and may be seen in old cities such as London.

The innkeeper still uses his sign today, and an inn in Britain without its painted board outside is a very uncommon sight. Most traders used to have their own special signs, and some of these remain today.

But inns might have any kind of sign. The names chosen are very different. Sir Thomas Brownie, a writer of the seventeenth century, noticed that "The Sun" and "The Moon" were very common in his day, and he rightly supposed that the origin of some signs was among nations who knew nothing of God. Other inns were named after animals, real or unreal, or after things or men: "The Bell", "The Elephant", "The Old Ship", "The Carriage and Horses", "The Green Man". Noblemen who were well treated at an inn allowed the innkeeper to use their family signs (known as coats of arms) over his door and this he was proud to do.

In the towns where shopkeepers had their signs close together, each one partly hid the next. This was unsatisfactory, and so the holders were made longer and longer so that they stuck out further and were more clearly seen. The boards themselves grew bigger and bigger, and the time came when it was difficult and even dangerous for a carriage to drive along the narrow streets under the immense boards hanging over the middle. Some signs were real things and not painted boards, and sometimes when they were old they fell off the holders, from which they hung, thus bringing danger to those who walked below. In the wind, too, they swung backwards and forwards, making terrible, and quite unnecessary, noises at night while the neighbors were trying to sleep. In the eighteenth century the troubles caused by swinging signboards had become so noticeable that laws were passed (1762-70) to make the shopkeepers place their signs flat against the wall.

It was easy enough to advertise a fish shop by using a large picture of a fish; and if anyone wanted to describe "The Silent Woman" he could (and did) put up a painting of a woman with no head. It was more difficult to show a name without writing it out in letters, and a shopkeeper's name is important, at least to himself. But even this

was sometimes possible, in spite of the difficulty. A picture could be painted giving the sounds of the name, as in the sign for the town of Chester, which was a chest (box) with a star above it - chest-star. (This way of showing words by pictures of things is called a rebus -Latin for "by things").

In addition to their signboards, these old tradesmen used trade cards, which could be handed to people in a town rather as a business man of today hands a man his card. But these were not, in fact, cards: they were pieces of paper giving information about shops and goods. In the days before people could read, these «cards» also used signs and pictures instead of words, and again there was the difficulty of showing the shopkeeper's name. Robert Legg, a tradesman, who had his shop in Southampton Street, London, showed on his «card» the picture of a human leg without the body. An uneducated workman, seeing this paper lying about, knew that it contained information about Mr. Legg. Modern trade marks, which we may see on different kinds of objects to show their origins, have developed from these old trade signs.

The rough forms of advertisement which had been brought into use by this date did little more than give plain information. They told the man who wanted a table where he could buy a table, but they did little to persuade him that one table was better than another. They were merely reminders.