A picture is worth a thousand words.....

  A picture is worth a thousand words.....

                               one picture is worth a thousand words. This saying was invented by an advertising executive, Fred R. Barnard. To promote his agency's ads he took out an ad in Printer's Ink in 1921 with the headline “One Look Is Worth a Thousand Words” and attributed it to an ancient Japanese philosopher. Six years later he changed it to “Chinese Proverb: One Picture Is Worth Ten Thousand Words,” illustrated with some Chinese characters. The attribution in both was invented; Barnard simply believed an Asian origin would give it more credibility.

An early use of the exact phrase appears in an 1918 newspaper advertisement for the San Antonio Light which says:

One of the Nation's Greatest Editors Says:

One Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The San Antonio Light's Pictorial Magazine of the War

Exemplifies the truth of the above statement—judging from the warm

reception it has received at the hands of the Sunday Light readers.

It is believed by some that the modern use of the phrase stems from an article by Fred R. Barnard in the advertising trade journal Printers' Ink, promoting the use of images in advertisements that appeared on the sides of streetcars. The December 8, 1921 issue carries an ad entitled, "One Look is Worth A Thousand Words."