The serious beards were a century earlier, when the terms "sideburns" and "mutton chops" were coined, when Dickens had a doorknocker beard, when Thomas Nast dre

The serious beards were a century earlier, when the terms "sideburns" and "mutton chops" were coined, when Dickens had a doorknocker beard, when Thomas Nast drew Uncle Sam with a goatee, and very few men were clean-shaven. One of the early pictures on that page shows Ken Thompson didn't have a beard in the early 1970s.