Where Does the Peace Symbol Originate?

Eric over at his SoHum Parlance blog puts up interesting stuff all the time. Here’s from a recent post:

That’s a dolled-up peace symbol. Ever wonder where it came from? I’ve heard many wicked tales, like it’s Satanic, masonic, a witch’s foot, and on a milder note, a dove’s print. But it turns out to be something far simpler.

The symbol was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom as the symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It was not originally intended to become the generic peace symbol, although the Campaign certainly never had any objections. They made a deliberate decision not to copyright the symbol.

The lines are overlapping naval semaphoric sympols (see the graphic below which comes from designboom) for N and D, intended to abbreviate Nuclear Disarmament.

Very simple, and yet artistic.