The Power Icon by Kurt Kohlstedt
High beams, lower battery, on, off, play, pause, risk of electric shock and fragile: handle with care — these apparently disparate designs have a lot more in common than people generally realize. Most of the symbols you see on appliances, automobiles and other gadgets made since the mid-1970s, including the computer “Power Symbol,” can be traced back to a single document. Published by the International Electrotechnical Commission, ISO 7000 / IEC 60417, or, more conventionally, “Graphical Symbols for Use on Equipment.”
At a glance, this rather technical document looks as dense and confusing as it sounds, but the icons featured in the collection are designed to be simple and universal — a modern hieroglyphic system for the whole world. These standardized graphics were made to be understood across languages and cultures. Some, like play, pause and stop, predate the set and were simply incorporated into it. Others, though, like the ubiquitous “Power Symbol” and a number of its variants were designed specifically for inclusion and have since gone global.
The iconic “Power Symbol” consists of a line emerging from a circle and it often appears on buttons designed to toggle the power state of a device, like a computer, turning it off or on. The design is derived from the numbers 1 and 0, which respectively mean “on” and “off” in binary and variants on the design have proliferated, too, like switches labeled with a separated line and circle — the line, or 1, symbolizes “on, “while the circle, or zero, symbolizes “off.”
01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 00111001 00111001 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010 01100011 01100101 01101110 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110110 01101001 01110011 01101001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01110010 01101111 01101101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101101 01100001 01110010 01110011
Like other symbols developed or included by the IEC, this particular icon design evolved in response to the increasing globalization of various technologies. Not only are the words “on” and “off” a too English-specific solution, but printing out whole words also takes up a lot of space on our ever-smaller devices. As exports and imports of electronics grew during the 20th century, words were increasingly replaced by symbols. The now-popular “Power Symbol” icon also appears on shirts, logos, cufflinks, album covers, and even tattoos.
Ultimately, users don’t need to understand the origin story of an icon to get what it means — once one gets the meaning from context, it is obvious on subsequent encounters. Still, like learning Latin to better understand modern languages, a more fundamental grasp does help explain what these other power-related buttons do, too. Once one understands that a line means “on” and circle means “off,” other symbols make more sense, like “Power On-Off Symbol” (a line completely enclosed within a circle), which is often used as a single button that toggles between fully on and fully off states versus just active and standby modes. In 2015, a campaign was launched and the proposal accepted to add this and other power-related characters to Unicode.
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Love the show. Listen all the time. Another great episode.
My 9th grade English teacher–a self-proclaimed flower child of the ’60s–had told us that the peace symbol is the footprint of a dove (in a circle). Although that is apparently apocryphal, I do like that explanation. (Of course, that could be a footprint of any number of bird species…)
There’s actually another Mad Magazine connection in this episode. The Vietnam-era Al Jaffee strip Hawks & Doves centered on Private Doves finding different ways to display a peace symbol, much to the annoyance of Major Hawks.
And a bit more color on Bayard Rustin: Rustin was a native of West Chester, Pennsylvania. In 2006, he was finally made the namesake of a new high school in the district. Rumor is that he was in the running for naming an earlier high school in the district but it was blocked due to him being gay. Thus, the district ended up with the redundantly named “West Chester East High School.”
Errr since when has this been the Peace Symbol? It’s the CND badge and that’s it! Well it was growing up in 1970’s Britain, punk, Anti Nazi League and CND. Am I the only person who has only ever associated the icon with CND? Funny since the next item featured the DK s – didn’t they have a logo based on their initials? Love the podcast, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables :)
Dear fellow beautiful nerds
I love this episode and I’m taking Roman’s request to submit a ubiquitous icon for further diving.
I love the Biohazard symbol. I love that it looks like absolutely nothing but a bunch of circles and squiggly lines but also instantly conveys “this will fuck your shit up stay away”. I’d love to know how it was designed.
We actually did a couple of articles on this, so here you go:
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/biohazard-symbol-designed-to-be-memorable-but-meaningless/
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/beyond-biohazard-danger-symbols-cant-last-forever/
When I heard “semaphore” in the first segment my first association was how the lifeguards communicated with each other at Ocean City in the late 1960s and 1970s when we were there for family vacations.
I always thought that’s what all lifeguards did but the show implied it was a local thing.
Wonder if there is a name or episode for that idea, things you know local that you think are global and they are not. Growing up in Baltimore I thought all bowling was duckpins, but that too was regional. Likewise, from FM radio then I was sure Little Feat was a national band but turns out they were big in Baltimore and one other city.
Anyhow, great show. I was worried there would be no Gump reference in the Smiley Face segment, whew
Icons: the hamburger for website menus?
Somewhat related to icons: I recall reading that clocks for sale used to be stopped at something like 10:10, with what turned out to be an apocryphal explanation about representing the time of a historical event, but more likely just not obscuring the maker’s name. But no such logic applies to clock icons or clip art. However, it seems most of those show both hands at or above the 9-3 line, and almost none show more than one hand below it. Is my perception correct? And, if so, why?
Less related, but: a frustration in reading some blogs is inconsistency in directional page navigation. “Next” and “previous” may mean opposite things on different sites. Still others use a variety of word labels. (“Older” and “newer” make the most sense.) Providing a number line is the most clear, but often annoying because you get a limited set of numbers to click, and the only alternative to slowly clicking back, say, two at a time, is a double arrow sending you all the way to one end. As blogs live longer, that’s less and less useful. Also annoying: Providing a number line but also having single arrows to move one page at a time — why the redundancy? And number lines that are so tiny it’s difficult to consistently click the correct spot on phones or tablets. (Indeed, I’d be interested in any look at blog design changes — the death of blogrolls, the birth of continuous scroll, why Geocities sites had such hideous layouts and why most sites don’t now.)
An intersting case is the Burger Menu Icon, thought to be ubiquitous but is actually not. Have you perhaps talked about it before..?
I would love to know who is behind the images on the care tags for clothing. They are too small to discern, and even with a magnifying glass I can’t figure out the meaning.
Great episode. Thanks.
Thanks for another great episode.
Just wanted to add that the song »On The Road from Aldermaston« by Matt McGinn appears to be based on »The Ballad of Roddy McCorley« from the 1890s which tells the story of the Irish nationalist’s death after being allegedly involved in the the Battle of Antrim.
Your discussion about the trademark issues around the smiley face reminded me of a story that’s played out in Australia in recent months, with a trademark issued on the Aboriginal flag and a non-indigenous clothing company that holds the license to use it issuing cease and desist orders against businesses run by indigenous people. See for example https://www.sbs.com.au/news/indigenous-companies-told-they-can-t-use-the-aboriginal-flag-over-copyright-concerns
I greatly enjoyed this episode – but had no idea how much until a question popped up in Trivia last night. “If you were going to communicate in semaphore, what would you need?” Clearly our Trivia Host is as much of a fan as I am!
I’d love to hear some history behind some ubiquitous sound effects. Why does everyone KNOW what a spider sounds like despite them never actually making noise? Why do we NEED to throw the sound of actual bowling pins over top of people being knocked over. Why does every gun have several invisible metal D rings attached to it that make noise anytime they’re moved?
There are so many weird noises that we kind of require in media to make stuff “make sense” despite have zero basis in reality.
I thought the power symbol was supposed to be a 1 and a zero joined together to look like a stylised light switch (the old chrome ones with a protruding stick the can be either up or down). I am surprised the visual similarity was not noted.
Great show! Thanks. As a youngster in the 1970’s I heard an (apparently fictitious) origin story for the peace sign: Derived from the “Make Love Not War” slogan, it depicted a man and woman in the missionary position inside a circle.
Something on the shaver socket icon. It’s really dreadful -how did they get away with that one.
I grew up during the 1960s. To me, the name for the peace symbol is “the drooping cross.” I was surprised that this name was not mentioned in the episode. I can’t tell you anything about the background of this name, sorry.
I was struck for the call of icons at the end by two which are often used and yet are well out of date. I work as a locksmith and keep seeing businesses use keys which stopped being used in the 1800’s for advertising images. So called warded keys were used in European castles. However, now those same castle keep them as symbols not as working keys.
The other dated symbol is that of indicating to somebody that there is a phone call across too much distance to noise to say it. You will see people simulate dialing a rotary phone while holding up a handset to their face. Granted, those phones exist but probably more in museums than in use.
Enjoy the show every time.
Love the hidden binary message in the article. Nice touch. ✌️❤️♻️
Another excellent episode! I would add that Captain Frederick Marryat standardized the navy flag signals with A Code of Signals (1817) and went on to compose the most wild and obscure flower code book, The Floral Telegraph (1836). Shameless plug for those interested in Marryat or flowers-as-code
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/captain-frederick-marryat-and-the-floral-telegraph-or-a-forgotten-coder-and-his-floral-code/D0F8F84EC1FB389B5B9360EE7CC2BF26
Also, Symbol Sourcebook by Henry Dreyfuss is another great example of an attempt to universalize design and code across languages and disciplines in the 1960s.
I’m very curious about the male and female symbols. There’s got to be a good story there.
Hey, there’s an important typo in the transcript:
” Coupled with the D, this flipped figure could stand for “unilateral disarmament,” too, Holtom’s ultimate dream.”
The audio says his dream was ‘universal disarmament’.
Doing a tacky and leaving a negativism comment when 99% of the time I enjoy the podcast yet don’t comment.
It just seemed this was painfully self explanatory material / common knowledge.
What 99pi listener wouldn’t glance at an on off symbol and see the binary? The peace symbol has been explicated ad infinitum. The info on smiley faces: “Did you know this is a versatile symbol with different meanings depending on context?” Mind blowing.
IMO this was a weak sauce Wikipedia skim.
Sorry! Decided to embrace the horror of leaving a negative comment and just go for it. Hope it is apparent that this criticism on has any definition as I thought this episode stood in contrast to your usually excellent work. This was 99 lite.
@romanmars @99piorg
If you turn the peace symbol upside down, it looks like 10:09:35 This is the time that timepieces are set to in advertising
https://chamblee54.wordpress.com/2017/01/06/why-the-time-is-always-100936-4/
Am I the only one who can’t hold an elevator door open because the symbols for door open and door closed are confusing? In fact, I usually get them exactly mixed up because to me the closed symbol looks like the doors are opening, and vice versa.
Would love to see more in this series!
First off, love this pod cast and I’m still trying to get to the current episodes after starting all the way back at Episode 1. I hope you are able to keep going. I was also interested to hear this episode because of the power symbol, I knew where the symbolism came from, but I didn’t know the history, which I knew you would be able to research and share.
That’s why I was surprised to hear that the O and I related to binary code, which is not my understanding at all. Although the standby symbol combining the two is more recent and as reported relates to an intermediate power state, the O and I are much, much older than binary code.
It was my understanding that the O and I came from the relationship between electricity and plumbing. Think of cables as pipes, and the electricity as something that flows through those pipes. The O and I relate to a valve, and specifically a butterfly valve. If you look down a pipe, with a butterfly valve closed, it closes the pipe, stopping flow and turning it off, i.e. O. When the valve is open, it looks like a line running across the pipe, flow is enabled, or on, i.e. I. It would be great if this could be confirmed or debunked!
Keep up the good fight.
I have always thought the power symbols of O and I should be opposite. In my mind an O represents a completed electrical circuit (ON) and the I represents an interrupted circuit (OFF).