Talk:Chad (graffiti)

Historical Revelence

 * Personaly, I feel that Chad has enough historcal and cultural seperation to qualify for an entry. Perhaps if he was only the (optional) graphical accompanyment to the phrase "Kilroy was here", or even if he was US in origin, but he came into being in the UK, with a different textual accompaniment. As Chad clearly predates Kilroy, perhaps Kilroy should be merged under Chad... Alex Law 03:40, 23 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Indeed. Chad preoccurred, had a seperate historical "identity" ("wot no..."), and then got swallowed by Kilroy; it's still a seperate and distinguishable thing. I hadn't even noticed the merge request, and there's nothing mentioned on Kilroy was here... it's been up for three weeks, I reckon we can remove it. Shimgray 11:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Removed. Rich Farmbrough 10:16, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Image
Do we have an image/example of Chad graffiti? fuck -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 16:27, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I spotted one in the wild last week, on a church in central Oxford, but unfortunately someone had got to it with a bucket of water beforehand - it was too faded to be worth trying to take a picture of. There must be a freeish old one on the net somewhere, though... Shimgray | talk | 18:29, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Image It has just taken me five minutes to draw one (wot no picture). Any registered contributor could do the same and post it.82.38.97.206 21:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)mikeL

I've added one I've spotted. // Liftarn
 * I took out the picture of Kilroy at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. because it is clearly labeled (quite literally written in stone, no less) a picture of Kilroy. If Chad and Kilroy are different enough to merit separate articles on Wikipedia they merit separate pictures as well.  It also seems a bit silly to have three examples of a doodle that do not differ that much from each other.  --Ddawn23 09:58, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Origin of Chad
From an early age I have understood the Chad cartoon to be a piece of blackboard humour. (My father was a physics lecturer).

I believe the original to be a diagram of the addition of a fundamental half wave and its third harmonic, starting in-phase at the left. Where the two reinforce there is a plus sign which become the eyes. where they counteract there is a minus sign which becomes a mark near the tip of the nose. At some point the teacher asks 'what happens here', pointing at the peak of the fundamental, and adds a question mark which becomes a hair. After class someone rubs out the horizontal axis through the 'nose', adds a few crosses to indicate bricks, adds 'Wot - no ...', and we have Chad.

The earliest I saw in the early fifties had the plus, minus and question marks. One funfair slot machine had Chad on the backplate exactly as I have described, with a catchline similar to 'Wot - no losers' indicating that all the ball pockets were 'Win'. They were old games machines back then. Davidgl 09:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I remember reading in a book on militairy slang that it was originally drawn using electrotechnical symbols. I'll see if I can find a reference.SQB 11:38, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Australian origin
This lot just got added to the main article - I'm not entirely sure about it, so I've put it here for comments rather than remove it totally. Anyone? Shimgray | talk | 00:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The graffiti-like "Mr Chad" appeared in 1943 in a wartime class of army students learning how to design and draw direct current (DC) electrical circuits at the (now) Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. The design elements of DC schematic diagrams are the Resistor, the Capacitor (or Condenser), the Induction Coil, the Battery (or cell), and Earth. The Positive and Negative points of Electromotive Force (or Potential Difference, or Voltage) are indicated on circuit diagrams by + and -, and the symbol for the Ohm, the amount of resistance in a Resistor, is the Greek letter Omega. The circuit symbols or ikons used for the five main elements look something like this:-

Resistor, which impedes current flow				---/\/\/\/\/\/\/\---

Capacitor, which absorbs and stops DC current flow		-| |---

Coil, which slows down changes in current flow		---

Battery, which is the source of current flow 			---| i---

| Earth, which drains away current flow. ---| 1 i 								   |

Some army student playfully assembled these and related circuit diagram descriptors in the following way:-

First the Omega, a symbol for Ohms Then put a Capacitor across the opening – to become the nose looking over the fence Then add a Resistor at each end – for the hands on the fence Add a Positive and Negative for the eyes Put in a Battery on one side and Earth on the other for the ears Finally add a single Coil on top for a hair.

The name of CHAD was adopted because of a student mnemonic for the less common measures which applied to circuit elements. Amps, Volts and Ohms were well known from the AVOmeter which was widely used to measure them. A Capacitor's size is expressed in Coulombs, and the inductance of a Coil is expressed in Henrys. The strength or density of a Coil's magnetic field is expressed in Gauss. but popular talk at the time was of De-Gaussing ships against German magnetic mines, so D was a sufficient reminder for Gauss. Include an A for Amps and you have CHAD – coulombs, henrys, amps and (de)gauss. The original labeling of Mr Chad was "Watt, no power?" meaning that the circuit was poorly designed and gave no current flow. (Watt is the unit of electrical energy or Power). This came to be written on blackboards as "Watt no power?" for power blackouts, then "Wot no teacher?" and "Wot no Chalk?", and further corruption from the original led to gnome-like creatures peering over walls saying "What no xxxx". Army personnel carried Mr Chad from Australia to England and elsewhere. There was no association in Australia with Kilroy.

UK origin
Another section removed from the article:


 * ''I should like to give my own first hand knowledge of "Chad". We worked together for a number of years in Eastbourne at a Holiday camp in the 1970's/80's.  He was the resident cartoonist/artist while I was the photographer.  Chad's real name was Len H. Chadwick and his drawings first started while in the 46th Div. of the 185 Field Ambulance Regiment. He was a survivor of the assaults on Monte Cassino in the 2nd world war. Not just a cartoonist, but a talented painter who used many techniques.  He worked for many years after the war as the cartoonist of a national newspaper  ( I can't rember which). His last known address was somewhere in Teddington, London but I have lost contact and would dearly like to rediscover him.
 * Although with the passing years this may make this probably impossible. I am privaledged to own paintings of his wartime experiances as lasting reminders.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fautley (talk • contribs)

A note
No source for this as it's simply personal recollection, but... I'm only in my 30s, and I remember a craze for drawing "Chads" at school in Worcestershire. We had no idea why they were called that, but Chads they were. (The word "Kilroy" wasn't used at all in connection with them.) 86.136.248.127 (talk) 04:14, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I am in my thirties too, growing up in Middlesex. I remember seeing graffiti Chads all over the place in the '80s and etched into school tables.  I never understood what they were until fifteen minutes ago.  Jason404 (talk) 15:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Possible Origin? -- Inventory Marking
I was told an anecdote by someone older than me earlier. He believes Chad was originally used by some member of the armed forces to mark storage crates (for inventory checks), perhaps in lieu of a signature and it was seen and copied in doodles. Has anyone else heard anything like this? 90.206.206.20 (talk) 03:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)