ABC News - New York

While opponents of a possible Puerto Rican statehood bemoan squeezing 51 stars onto the blue field of our flag, the people whose livelihood revolve around the American standard have plotted well beyond that.

I wasn’t around for the last change, and I have to say that in the abstract, tinkering with Old Glory seems a heretical thing. But I’ve since learned that Americans have proven themselves surprisingly amenable to change. 

The Idaho Surprise

In the nation’s history there have been 27 flag updates, the most recent in 1960 with the addition of Hawaii.

And when the classic 48 stars got bumped up to 49, with Alaska in 1959, it meant altering the flag that had been around the longest—47 years—and had flown over our GIs in two world wars.

“The public reaction to changing the flag has always been positive,” says Dr. Whitney Smith, a historian and director of the Flag Research Center, in Winchester, Mass. That’s due to the American attitude that it’s our “destiny to conquer the world and have a star for every part,” he conjectures.

All that world dominion has in the past wreaked havoc on flag manufacturers. An 1817 law dictates that new flags be introduced on the Fourth of July.

That’s fine and patriotic, unless the government slips an unexpected state into the Union, as it did on July 3, 1890, when Idaho was signed aboard. Manufacturers and the public were caught one star short of a proper constellation at ceremonies the next day.
   

Some Astrophysics

Also codified into law is the basic configuration of the flag, which specifies that the number of stripes remain constant at 13, while the number of stars increase with each new state. With such tight parameters, it didn’t take Smith and his team long to figure out that certain mathematical formulas would govern how the stars are arranged.

In 1963 he did the math to determine that a flag with 51 stars would have the following pattern; nine in a row, then eight, then nine, then eight, then nine, then eight, as opposed to today’s six, five, six, five, six, five, six. It was such a great discovery, he copyrighted it. He doesn’t, however, expect the government to come knocking with a fat check should Puerto Rico make the cut.

“After all, they never gave Francis Hopkinson anything when he designed the first Stars and Stripes in 1777,” Smith says.

And for every conformist who will play along with the straight row theory, there’s always a few who are unfettered by linear constraints. When Hawaii was added in 1959, someone suggested the 50th star be placed along one of the red or white bars to signify its remoteness from the contiguous states. And Smith says he gets calls all the time from would-be Besty Rosses who’ve designed newer, hipper flags—like the one that uses stars to spell out “In God We Trust,” or the outline of the Statue of Liberty.

Fly Your Favorite Era

The mutant flag with 54 stars is one of many prototypes kept in the New Jersey plant of Annin & Co. , a maker of American flags since 1847. There, the 51-star flag is old hat; workers have been cranking out small nylon versions since 1988, when statehood advocates requested them.

It’s a fairly unusual case of anticipating a future flag, according to Frank Granelli, the company’s marketing director. “A citizen can fly anything he wants, but one tradition among flag people is to fly an older U.S. flag.”

The Besty Ross flag (13 stars, 13 stripes) is a popular item, as is the Star-Spangled Banner, (15 stars, 15 stripes.) The Civil War flags, with 33, 34 and 35 stars, are so popular Granelli says they keep them in stock at all times.

Oh Say Can You See … the Future?

The 51-star flags already out there is the first peak in a production decade that could be what Granelli likens to a “rollercoaster.”

If statehood is granted, nobody, he predicts, will want to buy today’s flags after 2005, since they would be outmoded with the Puerto Rico’s inclusion in 2008. Therefore, he thinks business would wane before surging forth in unprecedented numbers.

“Basically, what we would have to do is replace every flag in the United States,” he says, “barring the ones on Everest and the Moon.”

While neither of those locations are officially in the United States, he does have a point. These might be the twilight years for an old family friend.