Origin of the Peace Symbol

September 12th, 2009

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If there is a signal symbol that conjures up memories and even to a great extent stands for our generation it is the ‘peace sign.’ Many would be surprised that the country that gave us the Beatles also birthed the symbol that we put around our necks, drew on high school notebooks, and sprayed on walls in the 1960s.

To political activists in the United States it symbol called for an end to the Vietnam war, but to a much broader spectrum of us it conjured up a more emotional peace with ourselves that came from breaking from what we saw as the uptight generation of our progenitors.

To designer and WWII conscientious objector, Gerald Holtom, who first drew the symbol it was a sign of objection to nuclear weapons, sort of a ‘ban the bomb’ icon. He designed it for once specific occasion: a 50 mile protest march from London’s Trafalgar Square to a weapons factory at Aldermaston. The march was organised by the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) joined in.

Like many symbols it is modification of existing images and filled with new meaning. Holtom rendered two navy semaphore codes

70px-semaphore_november1 for N and 70px-semaphore_delta for D

to line drawings and placed them over each other to form the symbol:

peace-sym

The codes N and D, in Holtom’s mind, stood for Nuclear Disarmament. His original drawing is housed in the Peace Museum, U.K. in Bradford, England.

60′s activists and flower children were not the only United States citizens to employ the peace symbol, but in Vietnam US troops who identified with them also dawn the symbol. Some of our troops in Baghdad brandish the symbol today.