When something is exactly as it should be, it is said to be picture perfect. So how did this term come about?
Back on September 6, 1977, the Montreal Gazette ran a story about NASA’s Voyager 1 lift off in Florida. The headline announced: “Voyager’s Start Picture-Perfect” as the first paragraph trumpeted: “Voyager 1 blasted off towards the outer planets yesterday in a near-flawless launch, joining its twin space probe Voyager 2 on a 675-million-mile journey to Jupiter and beyond.”
A generation before that, readers of the Milwaukee Journal back on May 18, 1950 were delighted to find a recipe for Picture Perfect Strawberry Preserves printed in their local newspaper. The description under the headline read: “The whole fruit with natural color and flavor make these out of this world.” All it took to make Picture Perfect Strawberry Preserves was 4 cups of strawberries, 4 cups of beet sugar and 1/2 cup of water plus a lot of attention paid to just 3 ingredients while cooking up those preserves.
And a generation before that, the Reading Eagle newspaper published an advertisement for the Glen-Gery Shale Brick Brick Home on March 28, 1926. The description read:
When you build your brick home make it a thoroughbred — brick footings, walls, bearing partitions, chimneys, and fireplaces. And surround it with harmony that makes the picture perfect — brick walks, brick drive, and brick garage. Banish painting, repairing and that “wish I had” feeling that comes when it’s too late. Look for the “100% Brick Home” sign before you buy. Cost? Not so much more than for any type of construction. You can even build with brick at no extra cost. Come in – let’s talk it over.
In the end, however, the term “picture perfect” was coined in America at the turn of the 20th century. As early as January 1909, the Atlanta Constitution newspaper ran a story in its ‘Savannah Social News’ column that read:
Exquisite decoration made the setting for the wedding picture perfect, quantities of lovely flowers being used in the adornment of the four rooms.
Of course, all of this can be traced back to those who, when arranging a room just so during Victorian Times when family photographs were oftentimes posed in the parlour, insisted that the room and the subjects be “perfect” for the “picture” hence the term “picture perfect.”
Historically Speaking 