The silent era of film dates from roughly the introduction of the film medium in the late 1800s through the late 1920s and refers to those movies made without synchronized sound. By 1912 advancements in film technology and editing within the United States allowed for filmmakers to begin using multiple reels of film for a single movie, leading to the growth of the American film industry and the introduction of the feature-length film. These newly expanded stories, combined with organized and higher budget studio productions, also led to the rise of the first movie stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Clara Bow. The introduction of synchronous sound into feature films (also known as "talkies") in 1927 is traditionally considered the end of the silent film era and in many cases the end of the box office power of many silent movie stars.

Variations on the practice of scrapbooking date as far back as the 14th century when it was popular for upper-class members of European society to keep a bound journal of blank pages, known as a commonplace book, that served as a place for the owner to write informal notes taken from a variety of sources in one place. With the introduction of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s, books and other printed materials became more accessible and by the 1800s, as the availability and types of printed materials expanded, including widespread circulation of newspapers, the role of the commonplace book shifted, with owners now filling them with clippings, poetry, drawings, and other various "scraps" of printed material. The first recorded use of the term "scrap book" as a noun to describe these books with blank pages for pasting items is believed to be in 1821, with the two words morphing naturally overtime into the now common "scrapbook." The first use of the word as a verb to describe the practice itself was recorded in 1879.