Billboards: Past and Present It's everywhere. Indoors, advertising is in magazines and newspapers, on television, and even popping up on computer screens. Outdoors, advertising means billboards. They’re in train stations and on the sides of buildings. They’re along highways in the countryside. Billboards were once large painted signs that urged consumers to buy anything from fried chicken to dish soap. Nowadays, billboards are high-tech devices that advertise the products of the modern world, from cellular phone service to perfume. Billboards have changed along with technology. Originally painted directly onto wooden boards or the sides of buildings, billboards were first improved by attaching large printed vinyl strips to a structure to form an advertiser's message. Later, mechanical billboards we developed which could display three different images. As one image changed to the next, the movement caught the eye of anyone passing by. More recently, electronic technology has produced back-lit billboards, which shine a light through an image printed on a sheet of plastic, and digital billboards that can display huge images similar to those on a television screen. The latest trend in billboards is interactivity In Belgium, a billboard that looked like a pinball machine had people on the street using text messaging to answer a question the billboard sent to their cell phones. If they answered correctly, they had a chance to win a new car. In Japan, some billboards feature QR("Quick Response")codes, a newer version of bar codes, which can be read by specially programmed camera cell phones. When a person takes a picture of a billboard with a QR code, the advertisers website appears on heir phone. A billboard in New York's Times Square lets people on the street play a video game using their cell phones, and a huge digital sign in London's Piccadilly Circus responds when someone waves at it and displays different images depending on the weather. Billboards do not always get a positive reaction, however. The large number of billboards along American highways led to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. This group of laws aimed to Preserve the scenic beauty of the countryside as well as the safety of people driving in cars by limiting the number and location of billboards In Athens, Greece, city officials ordered the removal of hundreds of downtown billboards before the 2004 Olympic Games in an effort to restore the city's historical beauty, Billboards may be a favorite of advertisers, but not everyone wants to look at them.