Click image to enlarge. Page from Norman Mailer’s 1943 ‘Harvard Freshman Facebook’

Facebook. No doubt you’ve heard of it. But did you know that the origin of Facebook really comes from the concept of a “freshman facebook”? Many universities publish and distribute a yearbook of sorts to its incoming freshman students that includes registrants’ photos and a few biographical details about them. The idea is that this book will be a tool to help students get to know one another in the incoming class.

At Harvard University, this directory is known as the Harvard Freshman Red Book Register, and this practice had been in place for three years (started by the class of 1940) by the time Norman Mailer matriculated in 1939.…