"Gravity. It Isn't Just a Good Idea. It's the Law."

I coined this phrase in 1977, and it has gone through a number of iterations over the years, culminating in the full color, official Gravity Poster, which I published in 1986.

I've sold over 5,000, though orders trailed off in the mid '90's and my career and attentions took a few turns. But ever since Al Gore invented the Internet, I get up to two emails a year asking if I'm "that" Gerry Mooney, and if I have any Gravity Posters laying around. I decided to see if there was still a market for what has always been one of my favorite projects.

I've also seen the phrase appear on t-shirts, bumper stickers, etc., and I always thought it was cool that it caught on. The potential for copyrighting or trademarking the phrase itself, or making money from its use by others, is absolutely zero, and anyway, that's not my intent. However, as I made plans to sell the poster online, I thought it would be interesting to see about the presence of the phrase on the Internet. I did a Google search.

What I found prompted me to create this History of the Gravity Poster.

At one time it was in the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the first line of their article on rollercoasters.

Then there's this quote from Working with Nature:"When touring an IBM assembly plant that used gravity-fed assembly lines, the guide joked with me that they should put up one of the inspirational banners often found in Big Blue plants reading: "Gravity: it isn't just a good idea -- it's the law!"

But the knife in my heart, the cause of so many tears cried into my pillow at work, was the number of times it is attributed to..."Anonymous!" (emphasis mine)

So I started digging through my files, determined to document the history of my weighty contribution to pop culture.

Welcome to . . . The History of the Gravity Poster.