The Peace Symbol

You've probably seen the peace symbol your whole life and associate with anti-war protesters and hippies.  Did you ever wonder where the symbol came from?  Compared to a lot of widely recognized symbols, the peace symbol is fairly young.  The symbol was designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958 for the British nuclear disarmament movement.  The symbol is actualy derived from the letters N (nuclear) and D (disarmament) in the semaphore flag system.

N

D

The symbol was made specifically for a march London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in England in April 1958, which was supported by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).  Afterwards, the symbol became the badge of the CND and later became the symbol of the anti-war movement.  The symbol is un-patented and is used for a wide range of anti-war and peace related causes. In order to spread peace over the internet, the symbol made its way to Unicode and is represented by U+262E ☮.  

I hope this was an enlightening post and you now have a little more background knowledge about the peace symbol.  Even though it is not very important to know the origin of this symbol to understand its meaning, it interesting to know the origins of an internationally recognized symbol.