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History of the NIH Logo
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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) dates back to 1887 and began as the laboratory arm of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS). In its early years, the agency used the PHS seal or logos of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services).
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/history-nih-logo
In 1976, NIH began work on an updated logo, one that would reflect the agency’s relationship with grantees and other health institutions. Designers opened the ends of the triangle to resemble glassware used in NIH laboratories and to demonstrate the agency’s openness to the outside. The new mark could be used with or without the spelled out agency name, and it could easily be rendered in color. In November 1969, the new logo premiered as part of the NIH Record masthead. While highly recognizable, the logo, over time, came to be called “the coat hanger logo” and the “beaker logo,” and it served the NIH for three decades. It even made a TV appearance in 2005, when it was included in a hospital scene on NBC’s short-lived, prime time series Medical Investigation, although it appeared upside down.
NIH also had a logo created especially for the agency’s 1987 centennial. To create the logo, the agency sponsored a design contest in 1984. Several hundred individuals submitted 1,354 entries, according to the NIH Record, which tracked the contest. A Clinical Center nurse won the $500 prize for her design featuring the number 100 with a microscope set within interlocked zeros and the words "A Century of Science for Health National Institutes of Health, 1887-1987" surrounding it.