Need info on the history of steel strings, amps in jazz

[Aaron Allen]

Ken,
Thanks alot for your reply! Im still curious about how bassists were heard in the old days. From looking at pictures and videos, they are not using an amp and are just playing into a mic. Was the signal from this mic sent to some speakers for the audience, or was it just for recording purposes and any bass that the audience got was purely acoustic? I want to know if guys like PC, Sam Jones, Doug Watkins, LaFaro, etc were playing totally acoustic, in which case a lot of what they were doing in live situations was probably lost to the audience. Or was there some kind of reinforcement so that what the audience heard was more like the records from that time where the bass is heard much clearer and louder due to the proximity of a mic?
Thanks for your help,
Aaron