Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993 TAG: 9311140176
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Sean Holton Orlando Sentinel
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
To get the answer we called Whitney Smith, director of the Flag Research Center in Winchester, Mass. The center is the world's leading institute of "vexillology," which is the study of flags, heraldry and other aspects of state symbolism.
Smith told us our question was really stupid. But it raised an interesting point nonetheless.
First, the stupid part:
"The amount of room available is a function of the size of the star . . . it's not a question of absolutes," Smith patiently explained. "You could put 5,000 stars on there if you wanted. They just would be so small you couldn't make them out."
But now for the interesting part: Flag experts like Smith already know the design of a 51-star flag. They worked it out nearly three decades ago.
Since 1960, Americans have been pledging allegiance to a flag with 50 stars arranged in alternating rows of 6-5-6-5-6-5-6-5 and 6 stars.
Smith didn't even break a sweat when we asked him whether the admission of Puerto Rico wouldn't hopelessly skew that familiar, symmetrical arrangement.
"Clearly the 51-star flag would be 9-8-9-8-9-8. Six alternate rows, staggered," he said. "The only non-symmetrical aspect would be that the top row would be nine and the bottom row would be eight."
OK, Mr. Flag Expert. What if the District of Columbia is admitted at the same time and we end up with 52 states? Will Old Glory be ready for that scenario?
"Oh, yeah, sure," Smith said. "We worked out what it would look like all the way up to 55 stars.
"We did it in 1964; we figured out what the formula was and what the different star patterns would be," he said. "It's a matter of finding the mathematical arrangement for stars that allows for horizontal rows with no more than a one star difference per row and having them alternate."
Smith said predicting the designs of future flags is more science than art: "We didn't invent them (the designs). We applied the formula. It's like somebody carrying pi to the next 10 decimal points."
It hasn't always been so precise. The history of the U.S. flag is as mixed-up as the procession of new states that it mirrors.
From the beginning, the flag has been mired in a myth. Call it The Big Betsy Ross Lie. Americans may want to believe that a patriotic Philadelphia seamstress worked her fingers off designing their first national banner, but historians say the story is apocryphal.
"Yes, Betsy Ross lived," Smith conceded. "But did she make the very first flag? Extremely unlikely. There's little to no historical evidence"
Smith said the real unsung hero is an early congressman named Francis Hopkinson, who came up with the idea of using stars to represent states. ("He just didn't have as good a P.R. agent as Betsy Ross," Smith said.)
Still, the only guidelines Congress initially set for the flag was that it have one star and one stripe representing each state in the Union.
The first flag was simple enough: 13 stars and 13 stripes. Then Vermont and Kentucky entered the Union, and the flag grew to 15 stars and 15 stripes. Still manageable.
But by 1818, the Union had grown to 20 states. It was clear that the practice of adding stripe after stripe to the flag was slowly turning it into a bedspread-sized mess.
So that year, Congress reverted to the basic formula that still exists: 13 stripes to represent the original states, and one star representing each current state.
But even then, no one bothered to spell out precisely how the stars should be arranged. As the nation grew, state-by-state, the ever-expanding constellation of stars started swirling out of control.
"That's why you get these exotic patterns in the 19th century of stars arranged in rings and ovals and other patterns," Smith said.
Things really got confused in November 1889, Smith said, when four states were admitted to the Union in a nine-day period.
Flag-makers suddenly had to stop producing 38-star flags and have a full stock of 42-star models ready for sale by the following July 4 - the date when new stars traditionally were christened.
But all those 42-star flags went to waste on July 3, 1890 - when Idaho squeaked into the Union as the 43rd state.
In 1912, when Arizona and New Mexico were admitted to the Union, President William Howard Taft decided enough was enough. He signed an executive order specifying exactly how the stars should be arranged.
So after 125 years and 48 states, the United States finally had standardized its flag design. And in the subsequent 81 years, only two stars have been added.
Smith said he still gets kooky suggestions and drawings in the mail from people proposing an arrangement of stars. He said most are quite artistic, but highly impractical.
"Like trying to show the Statue of Liberty composed of stars," he said. "On a flagpole, you would never be able to make out what it was. It would just look like a blob."
The long period of 20th-century flag stability has conditioned most Americans to get queasy whenever they hear talk about changing the flag's design or even adding stars.
"People want that reassurance," Smith said. With any radical change in design, "you'd get 17 percent of people who'd say `Gee, that looks great.' And the rest would say, `My God, what have you done with our flag?"'
by CNB