Charles Atlas

Angelo Siciliano (1892 - 1972), more commonly known as Charles Atlas, was a bodybuilder and the most popular muscleman of his day. He marketed a fitness program for "97-pound weaklings."

Born in Arci, in southern Italy, he moved to Brooklyn, New York at a young age. Initially a small, weak child, Siciliano worked hard to tone his muscles, using a variety of weights. Contemplating upon the strength of a tiger in a zoo, he conceived the idea of working muscle against muscle, rather than working with deadweights. Using this system he acquired a physique that earned him the nickname "Charles Atlas", after Atlas, the Titan who held up the sky. He soon took the role of the strongman in the Coney Island Circus Side Show. In 1922 the publisher of the magazine Physical Culture dubbed him "the world's most perfectly developed man" in a contest held in Madison Square Garden.

Atlas developed his own muscle-building mail-order business. In 1928 his business partner Charles Roman took over the marketing of the business and coined the term "dynamic tension" to describe Atlas' use of muscle against muscle tugs-of-war. His most famous ad featured a scrwny kid who decides to bulk up after getting sand kicked in his face at the beach. His company did so well that it emerged from the stock market crash of 1929 unscathed. As many as 6 million people bought his mail order course, which is still offered today.

Atlas has posed for many statues through his life, including, it has been said, the statue of George Washington in New York's Washington Square.

Though the Charles Atlas ads popularized the phrase "97-pound weakling", whether Atlas himself ever was one is debated, as are other details concerning what was true and what was merely advertizing.