Camp UHA
The Suite Guys of Reeve House
Charles Alzamora
- Harvey R. BALL
- Harvey R. Ball (July 10, 1921 - April 12, 2001), an ad executive, was the
person with the strongest claim to having invented the smiley face -- the
simple, circular yellow face with an ear-to-ear grin and no ears (
).
In 1959, Mr. Ball founded an advertising and PR agency in Worcester, Massachussetts. In 1963, one of his clients, State Mutual Life Assurance Company of America, asked him to help with the reassurance of workers in the wake of a merger. According to Ball's claim, corroborated by issues of the Worcester Times & Gazette of that time, and by State Mutual Life company records, that was the beginning of the smiley face. It stands to reason: the meaningless smiley originated as a meaningless feel-good PR gesture substituting for a substantive assurance of continued work or placement and transition help? Oh well. State Mutual Life is now Allmerica Financial Corporation. Ball recalled that he was paid $45 for his artwork and never applied for a trademark or copyright. At least he wasn't fined.
According to the AP, the smiley's popularity peaked in 1971, when fifty million smiley buttons were sold. In 1999, the USPS issued a smiley-face stamp. Who says there isn't a distinctive American culture?
In 1989, Charlie Alzamora stepped forward to dispute Ball's claim of priority. You wouldn't think, by that time, it would be anything that anyone outside the post office would want to claim credit for. Alzamora, by then program director for New York radio station WMCA (AM 570; I don't think it had religious programming in those days), told the New York Times that a happy face with a slightly crooked smile was developed by the station in 1962 as a promotion for its DJ's. The face, with the slogan ``the WMCA good guys,'' was printed on thousands of sweatshirts distributed by the station.
They say that success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan. This must be an exceptional case.