Another one of
the interesting emails we’ve received after posting the Smoke covers came from G
in Paris who forwarded to us the fascinating story of Harvey Ross Ball, the
creator of the original “Smiley”. Ironically Ball never applied for a trademark
or copyright and made a grand total of $45 for it.

This comes from an
entry in Wikipedia:

Harvey Ross
Ball (10 July 1921 - 12 April 2001) is famous for his invention of the
Smiley.

Harvey Ball was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts,
USA. Whilst a student at South High School, he became an apprentice to local
sign painter, and later attended Worcester Art Museum School, where he studied
fine arts.

Harvey Ball served 27 years in the National Guard, and was
based in Asia and the Pacific during World War II. He retired as a Brigadier
General in 1973 and then served six years in the Army Reserves. He retired as a
full colonel in 1979. Ball was awarded the Bronze Star for heroism during the
Battle of Okinawa. He was awarded the Veteran of the Year award from the
Worcester Veterans Council in 1999.

After World War II, Harvey Ball
worked for a local advertising firm until he started his own business, Harvey
Ball Advertising, in 1959.

The invention of the Smiley came about in
1962. The State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, MA (now known as
Allmerica Financial) purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. The merger
resulted in low employee morale. In an attempt to solve this, Harvey Ball was
employed in 1963 as a freelance artist to create a smiley face to be used on
buttons, desk cards, and posters. In less then ten minutes the smiley face was
complete. The use of the smiley face was part of the company’s friendship
campaign where as State Mutual handed out 100 smiley pins to employees. The aim
was to get employees to smile while using the phone, and doing other tasks. The
buttons were highly popular, with orders in lots of 10,000 and at more than 50
million Smiley Face buttons were sold by 1971. The smiley has been described as
an international icon.

Ball never applied for a trademark or
copyright of the smiley and earned just $45 for his work. State Mutual,
similarly, did not make any money from the design. Ball’s son, Charles Ball is
reported to have said his father never regretted not registering the copyright.
The Telegram and Gazette of Worcester reported Charles Ball as saying “he was
not a money-driven guy, he used to say, ‘Hey, I can only eat one steak at a
time, drive one car at a time’”.

The associated “Have a Nice Day” tag
line was not part of the original design. Brothers Bernard and Murray Spain
later trademarked the line and the smiley face design in the early 1970s. The
Spain brothers and later marketers earned millions of dollars from Harvey’s
initial icon.

The World Smile Corporation was founded by Harvey Ball.
The corporation licenses Smileys and organizes World Smile Day. World Smile Day
raises money for the Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation, a non-profit charitable
trust which supports children’s causes. World Smile Day is held on the first
Friday of October each year and is a day dedicated to “good cheer and good
works”. The catch phrase for the day is “Do an act of kindness - help one person
smile”.

Harvey Ball died on 12th April 2001 as a result of liver
failure following after a short illness. He was 79 years old. He is survived by
his wife, Winifred, three sons and a daughter. He has a number of grandchildren
and great-grandchildren.