Who Created the Peace Sign (and Why)?

how would you get the message across? You could paint in all of branch or a origami crane of white poppy or fingers making a V sign, But there's an easier way draw circle bisect it with a vertical line and two lines pointing down at a forty five degree angle from that line, like two drooping arms, and Wala message delivered. The peace sign is one of the most recognized symbols in the modern world, and it's relatively short history.

It's become ubiquitous. It's on pajamas, jewelry, frisbees, in the floor mats of cars. But it has also been used as an emblem of a variety of uniquely twentieth century cultural and political movements, from the hippies to women's rights, to environmental protection to the end of South africa kind apartheid. But it was created for a very specific movement, nuclear disarmament. The peace symbol We Know and Love Today was created by Gerald Holtum, a British artist and activist who was

a conscientious objector during World War Two. During the late nineteen fifties, some people in England were concerned about what they called the Big Bomb, the weapon that had seen dropped on two Japanese cities during World War Two, effectively ending the war but killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process. But by night three countries, the United States, the Soviet Union and England had begun to stockpile nuclear weapons.

The Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, a group of pacifists and let's face it, people who were concerned about a future in which one nation state could destroy another by dropping a handful of bombs, organized a march from London to a facility where nuclear material was produced fifty two miles away that's about eighty three kilometers. Holton created a logo for the event, a circle circumscribing to characters from the flag semaphore alphabet, which is a type of

optical telegraph that's been used since the nineteenth century. The two characters are n for nuclear, which has both flags at the signal ER's side at forty five degree angles and D for disarmament, which is a straight vertical line with both flags pointing straight up. Holtem's goal was for the symbol to be bold, simple, easily reproduced, and easily recognized even on the grainy black and white television sets

of the day. And because he wanted his work to do whatever the nfties version of going viral was, he'd never copyrighted it and hoped it would take off. And boy did it ever. We spoke with Ken Calls, been author of Peace the Biography of a Symbol, which was published in two thousand eight on the fiftieth anniversary of

the symbol. He explained that as the Vietnam War was beginning in the early nineteen sixties, the symbol was adopted as an anti war symbol, and because Holtem internationally made it free for anyone to use, it was passed out on buttons on college campuses throughout the war and adopted by the hippie movement as a symbol of nineteen sixties youth subculture. Colsben said the early anti war people were

not hippies so much as pacifists. Worried about the growing fatalities in the Vietnam War, it morphed from a symbol that stood for nuclear disarmament to one that stood for peace. Gerald Holton died and, according to Colsben, who corresponded with him during the nineteen seventies, Holton asked that his tombstone depict the peace symbol he created, only with a twist. Colsben explained on his tombstone he wanted the symbol inverted. In other words, instead of drooping arms, he wanted the

arms of his peace symbol to be pointed upward. In his mind, this symbolized the tree of life. In symbology, when a symbol points downward, that means someone has died, so I think later in life he realized he wanted it to point up like the tree of life where mankind lives. Unfortunately, Holton's revised peace symbol didn't make it onto his tombstone, but the first iteration of a work has certainly made an impression on the world. Of course,

symbols are slippery. There have been plenty of emblems for one idea or system of thought that have had their meaning hijacked and changed by a political faction. For instance, the swastika is an ancient symbol that's been used in many parts of the world, from Scandinavia to India to the America's and the meaning is pretty wholesome and virtually all cases, with the one very notable exception. In various traditions, it was a symbol for divinity, good fortune, the sun,

well being. In rebirth. To the Buddhists, the swastika symbolized the footprints of the Buddha. Of course, in the twenties and thirties it was adopted by Nazi Germany as its national symbol. As a result, when you see the swastica these days, it brings up very different feelings than it did for the thousands of years of human history that came before it. Calls been said, the p symbol stands for the rights of many groups of people. It's a

remarkable symbol. We always have to stay alert to political factions picking up the symbol and changing the meaning. That would be very unfortunate. M Today's episode was written by Jesselin Shield and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is

a production of I Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other powerful topics is our home planet, how stuff Works dot Com and for more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.