From the time I was a little kid until a few years ago, the scoreboard on the Green Monster looked like this:

That pic is from 1999. From 1976 until 2001, that's all there was: the main section with the day's linescore, and the two other sections with the day's other American League scores. I'm well aware of the history of The Wall, so I knew that when they recently expanded the scoreboard to show National League scores, it wasn't a new idea (like the division standings, added in 2005, were). The minimalistic scoreboard I grew up with had been cut down from a wider version.

The most underrated (if rated at all) part of the old board? The "lineups" section:
That's Yaz in the 1975 World Series. Notice how the lineups are in lights, just like the at bat number still is. The rest of the numbers are placed by hand. Note, though, that the room inside the wall only extends far enough to the right to get those numbers up from behind the wall on the AL scoreboard. They have to walk out onto the field between innings to change the NL scores, using a ladder for the higher ones.

There also used to be an "umpires" section (apparently not always used):



Another shot with the lineups at far right.

The above shot also shows the whole board, circa '75, although at an extreme angle: Linescore, two sections of AL, two of NL, lineups.

In 2007, it's Ad, standings, ad, linescore, two AL sections, three NL sections, ad, ad:

(pic taken by me last month)

I wonder what they did when they cut down the size of the board originally. Did those huge panels just sit somewhere? Are they part of the new, long board, or are those new sections?

No real conclusion to this--just wanted to bring up that crazy lineups section, which can also be seen in shots from the '67 season. I don't know how long it'd been there at that point--if it went up when the board did in '34, or when the original ads were painted over with green paint in '47. Or if it always had the lights, or was manual like the rest of the board. Okay, forget what I said about being well-aware of the history. There are things I don't know. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. It also looks like the positioning of the "TAY" and "JRY" in Morse code changed during the '76 alteration.

(Top pic from something called scripting.com.)