what was the name of the first flag for the united states
Flag of the United States The name "Grand Union" was first applied to the Continental Colors by George Preble in his 1872 history of the U.S. flag.[6]
Flag of the United States Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a naval flag designer, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, designed the 1777 flag[20] while he was the Chairman of the Continental Navy Board's Middle Department, sometime between his appointment to that position in November 1776 and the time that the flag resolution was adopted in June 1777. The Navy Board was under the Continental Marine Committee.[21] Not only did Hopkinson claim that he designed the U.S. flag, but he also claimed that he designed a flag for the U.S. Navy. Hopkinson was the only person to have made such a claim during his own lifetime, when he sent a letter and several bills to Congress for his work. These claims are documented in the Journals of the Continental Congress and George Hasting's biography of Hopkinson. Hopkinson initially wrote a letter to Congress, via the Continental Board of Admiralty, on May 25, 1780.[22] In this letter, he asked for a "Quarter Cask of the Public Wine" as payment for designing the U.S. flag, the seal for the Admiralty Board, the seal for the Treasury Board, Continental currency, the Great Seal of the United States, and other devices. However, in three subsequent bills to Congress, Hopkinson asked to be paid in cash, but he did not list his U.S. flag design. Instead, he asked to be paid for designing the "great Naval Flag of the United States" in the first bill; the "Naval Flag of the United States" in the second bill; and "the Naval Flag of the States" in the third, along with the other items. The flag references were generic terms for the naval ensign that Hopkinson had designed, that is, a flag of seven red stripes and six white ones. The predominance of red stripes made the naval flag more visible against the sky on a ship at sea. By contrast, Hopkinson's flag for the United States had seven white stripes, and six red ones â€“ in reality, six red stripes laid on a white background.[23] Hopkinson's sketches have not been found, but we can make these conclusions because Hopkinson incorporated different stripe arrangements in the Admiralty (naval) Seal that he designed in the Spring of 1780 and the Great Seal of the United States that he proposed at the same time. His Admiralty Seal had seven red stripes;[24] whereas, his second U.S. Seal proposal had seven white ones.[25] Hopkinson's flag for the Navy is the one that the Nation preferred as the national flag. Remnants of Hopkinson's U.S. flag of seven white stripes can be found in the Great Seal of the United States and the President's seal.[23] When Hopkinson was chairman of the Navy Board, his position was like that of today's Secretary of the Navy.[26] The payment was not made, however, because it was determined he had already received a salary as a member of Congress.[27][28] This contradicts the legend of the Betsy Ross flag, which suggests that she sewed the first Stars and Stripes flag by request of the government in the Spring of 1776.[29][30] Furthermore, a letter from the War Board to George Washington on May 10, 1779, documents that there was still no design established for a national flag for the Army's use in battle.[31]
Flag of the United States The exact red, white, and blue colors to be used in the flag are specified with reference to the CAUS Standard Color Reference of America, 10th edition. Specifically, the colors are "White", "Old Glory Red", and "Old Glory Blue".[64] The CIE coordinates for the colors of the 9th edition of the Standard Color Card were formally specified in JOSA in 1946.[65] These colors form the standard for cloth, and there is no perfect way to convert them to RGB for display on screen or CMYK for printing. The "relative" coordinates in the following table were found by scaling the luminous reflectance relative to the flag's "white".
Union Jack When the first flag representing Britain was introduced on the proclamation of King James I in 1606,[19] it became known simply as the "British flag" or the "flag of Britain". The royal proclamation gave no distinctive name to the new flag. The word "jack" was in use before 1600 to describe the maritime bow flag.[9] By 1627 a small Union Jack was commonly flown in this position. One theory goes that for some years it would have been called just the "Jack", or "Jack flag", or the "King's Jack", but by 1674, while formally referred to as "His Majesty's Jack", it was commonly called the "Union Jack", and this was officially acknowledged.[8]