Kilroy is here is an expression of popular American culture that became popular during World War II; usually seen in graffiti. Its origins are debatable, but the distinctive companion phrases and doodles became associated with GIs in the 1940s - a plebos headed man (sometimes depicted with multiple hairs) with prominent noses peering over the wall with the radius of each hand grasping the wall.
"Kilroy" is an American equivalent to the Australian Foo here who originated during World War I.
"Chad's boss" or "Chad" is a version that became popular in Britain. Chad's character may have come from a British cartoonist in 1938, probably before dating, "Kilroy is here".
Etymologist Dave Wilton said, "Some time during the war, Chad and Kilroy meet, and in the spirit of Allied unity join, with English images appearing on top of the American phrase." Other names for characters include Smoe, Clem, Flywheel, Private Snoops, Overby, The Jeep (since both characters have a pretty big nose), and Sapo.
Author Charles Panati says that in the United States "the naughty face and the phrase become national jokes... The graffiti lethargy is not so much what it says, but where it appears." Kilroy's main graffiti mode ended in the 1950s, but now people around the world are still doodling characters and "Kilroy is here" in schools, trains, and other public places.
It is not known whether anyone is actually named Kilroy who inspired graffiti, despite claims over the years.
Video Kilroy was here
Origin and use of phrases
The phrase may come from the United States soldiers, who will draw a doodle and the text "Kilroy is here" on the wall and elsewhere where they are placed, camped, or visited. An advertisement in Life magazine noted that World War II warriors were fond of claiming that "wherever their beachheads invade, they always find the notices inscribed in front of them, that 'Kilroy is here'".
The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Brewer notes that it is primarily associated with the Air Transport Command, at least when observed in the UK. At some point, graffiti (Chad) and slogan (Kilroy is here) must have joined.
Many sources claim origins since 1939. The earliest examples of phrases used probably date from 1937, before World War II. The US History Channel broadcast Fort Knox: Secrets Revealed in 2007 and included a shot from "KILROY WAS HERE" dated 1937-05-13. The Fort Knox dome was loaded in 1937 and was not accessible until the 1970s, when the audit was done and the recording was taken. However, historian Paul Urbahns was involved in the production of the program, and he said that the recording was a reconstruction.
According to one story, German intelligence found a phrase about American equipment being caught. This led Adolf Hitler to believe that Kilroy could be the name or the name of a high-level Allied spy code. At the time of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, there was a rumor that Stalin found "Kilroy's here" written in the VIP bathroom, prompting him to ask his Kilroy aide. The war photographer Robert Capa recorded the use of this phrase in Bastogne in December 1944: "On the charred walls of abandoned warehouses, crossed out with white chalk, is a legend of GI McAuliffe: KILROY WAS STUCK HERE."
Foo is here
"Foo is here" graffiti is said to have been used extensively by Australians during World War I: "He was etched on the side of railway cars, appeared in every possible camp that AIF World War I served and generally made his presence felt." this is the case, then "Foo here" before the date "Kilroy is here" about twenty years.
The phrase "Foo is here" is used from 1941-45 as the equivalent of "Kilroy here" in Australia. "Foo" was considered a gremlin by the Royal Australian Air Force during World War II, and the name probably came from the 1930s Smokey Stover cartoon, where the character uses the word "foo" for whatever he can not remember his name. It has been claimed that Foo is derived from an acronym for the Forward Observation Officer, but this is probably a backronym.
Kilo Real
Oxford English Dictionary says that Kilroy is "The name of a myth". One theory identifies James J. Kilroy (1902-1962), an American shipyard inspector, as the man behind the signature. The New York Times shows J.J. Kilroy as origin in 1946, based on the results of a contest conducted by the American Transit Association to establish the origin of the phenomenon. The article notes that Kilroy has marked the ships themselves while they are being built, when they are not marked, as a way of ensuring he has checked the compartment - so, later on, the phrase will be found etched in places where no artist graffiti can reach (inside a closed hull room, for example), which then gives the mythical meaning to the sentence - however, if Kilroy can leave his trail there, who knows where he can go? The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Brewer records this as the origin of the possibility, but shows that "the phrase grows accidentally."
The Lowell Sun was reported in November 1945, titled "How Kilroy Got There", that a 21-year-old soldier from Everett, Sgt. Francis J. Kilroy, Jr., wrote "Kilroy will be here next week" on a barrack bulletin board in Boca Raton, Florida air base when it catches the flu, and the sentence is picked up by other aviators and quickly spreads abroad. The Associated Press also reported at the same time that according to Sgt. Kilroy, when he was hospitalized at the beginning of World War II, a friend of his, Sergeant. James Maloney, write that sentence on the bulletin board. Maloney continued to write short sentences when he was sent a month later, and other pilots immediately took the phrase. Francis Kilroy himself only wrote the phrase several times.
Maps Kilroy was here
Chad
The figure was originally known in England as "Mr. Chad". Chad will appear with the slogan "Wot, no sugar", or similar phrases that lament the shortcomings and rationing. She often appears with a single curly hair that resembles a question mark and with a cross in her eyes. The phrase "Wot, no -?" pre-dated "Chad" and is widely used separately from doodles. Chad is used by RAF and civilians; in the Chad army known as Personal Snoops, and in the Navy he was called The Watcher. Chad was probably first drawn by British cartoonist George Edward Chatterton in 1938. Chatterton was nicknamed "Chat", which later became "Chad." Life in the 1946 magazine said that the RAF and the Army competed to claim themselves as their own inventions, but they agreed that he first appeared around 1944. His character resembles Alice the Goon, the first Popeye character times appeared in 1933; another name for Chad is "The Goon".
A theory suggested by a spokesman for the Royal Air Force Museum London in 1977 was that Chad was probably an adaptation of the Greek letter Omega, which was used as a symbol for electrical resistance; its creator may be an electrician in the ground crew. Life suggests that Chad originated with REME, and notes that the symbol for alternating current, a sine wave through a straight line, resembles Chad, that the plus and minus signs in his eyes represent the polarity, and that the finger is a symbol of the electrical resistor. Characters are usually taken in Australia with pluses and minuses as the eyes and nose and eyes resemble a distorted sine wave. Similarly, The Guardian noted in 2000 that some readers have told them that "Mr. Chad" is based on a diagram representing the electrical circuit. A correspondent says that in 1941 at RAF Yatesbury a man named Dickie Lyle drew a diagram version as a face when the instructor left the room, and wrote "Wot, no leave?" underneath. This idea was repeated in the submission to the BBC in 2005 which included the story of a 1941 radar lecturer in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire drawing circuit diagrams, and the words "WOT! No electrons?" is being added. The RAF Cranwell Water Supply Association says that the image comes from a diagram on how to estimate square waves using a sine wave, also at RAF Yatesbury and with an instructor named Chadwick, and initially called Domie or Doomie, last name also recorded by Life as used by RAF. As an alternative to Chatterton or Mr Chadwick as the origin of Chad's name, REME claims that the name originated from their training school, nicknamed "Chad's Temple", the RAF claimed it emerged from Chadwick House at the Lancashire radio school, and the Desert Rats claimed it originated from an officer in El Alamein.
It is unclear how Chad gained widespread popularity or became conflated with Kilroy. It was, however, widely used by the end of the war and in the immediate post-war years, with slogans ranging from simple "What, no bread?" or "Wot, no char?" for the sad; one sight, on the glider side of the British First Airborne Division at Operation Market Garden, has a "Wot, no engine?" complaint. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1946 that Chad was "No. 1 doodle," noting his appearance on the walls of the Houses of Parliament after the 1945 Labor election victory, with "Wot, no Tories?" Austria in 1946 featured Mr. Chad along with the phrase "WotÃ, - no Fuehrer?"
When rationing becomes less common, so does jokes; while the cartoon is sometimes seen today as "Kilroy is here", "Chad" and its complaints have long fallen out of popular use, though they continue to be seen occasionally on the walls and references in popular culture. It is a common misconception that graffiti is tied to the Berlin Wall, "Chad" long before the date of the wall.
Smoe
Writing about Kilroy's phenomenon in 1946, the Milwaukee Journal described doodles as a European partner for "Kilroy's here," by the name Smoe. He also said that Smoe is called Clem in the African theater. He notes that in addition to "Kilroy is here" is often added "And so is Smoe". While Kilroy enjoys a resurgence of interest after the war over radio shows and comic writers, Smoe's name was gone by the end of 1946. The airman B-24 in 1998 also noted the difference between the Smoe and Kilroy characters (which he said never depicted), and suggested that Smoe stands for "Sad Men of Europe". Correspondents at Life magazine in 1962 also insisted that Clem, Mr. Chad or Luke the Spook is the name of the character, and that Kilroy is not commendable. The editor suggested that the names were all identical at the beginning of the war, then later separated into separate characters.
Other names
Similar images appear in many countries. Herbie (Canada), Overby (Los Angeles, late 1960s), Flywheel, Private Snoops, The Jeep, and Clem (Canada) are alternate names. An advertisement on Billboard in November 1946 for plastic 'Kilroys' also used the names Clem, Heffinger, Luke the Spook, Smoe and Stinkie. "Luke the Spook", a nose art on a B-29 bomber of the same name, resembles a doodle and is supposedly created at a Boeing plant in Seattle. In Australian variants, characters peeking in the wall are not named Kilroy but Foo , as in "Foo is here". In England, the graffiti is known as "Chad" or "Mr. Chad". In Chile, the chart is known as "sapo" (slang for nosy); this may refer to character snooping, frog-related activities due to prominent eyes. In neighboring Peru, Kilroy is sometimes known as "Julito", which started as a joke in the country's Foreign Ministry and is often seen writing on the blackboard. The same peep idea set the name used in Brazil, O Moita .
In Poland, Kilroy was replaced with "JÃÆ'³zef Tkaczuk", an elementary school cleaner (such as urban legend says), "Robert Motherwell" or "M. Pulina". Graffiti writing has sentence forms like "Gdzie jest JÃÆ'³zef Tkaczuk?" ("Where is Joseph Tkatchuk?") And "Tu by? EmÃ, - JÃÆ'³zef Tkaczuk" ("I'm here - Joseph Tkatchuk"). In Russia, the phrase "Vasya is here" (Russian: ????????? ) is a well-known graffiti piece.
In popular culture
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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