Phi Beta Kappa Society - The Key

The Key

The symbol of the Phi Beta Kappa Society is a golden key engraved on the obverse with the image of a pointing finger, three stars, and the Greek letters from which the society takes its name. The stars are said today to show the ambition of young pupils and the three distinguishing principles of the Society: friendship, morality, and learning. On the reverse are found the initials "SP" in script, which stand for the Latin words Societas Philosophiae, or "Philosophical Society".

The "key" of Phi Beta Kappa did not begin as a copy of a watchkey. The first insigne was in fact a larger, cut-and-engraved silver medallion, essentially a square of metal with a loop cut integrally with the body of the square from the same sheet of silver, in order to allow for suspension from one or two ribbons worn around the member's neck in the manner in which the older fraternities (and the Freemasonic bodies on which the collegiate societies were in part patterned) wore their own insignia. Later, the size of the medallion was reduced and men took to wearing the insignia on their watch chains as fobs. The post or stem, designed for the winding of pocketwatches, did not appear on fobs until the beginning of the 19th century. The fobs were not even gold at first; the earliest extant 18th-century models were made of silver or pewter, and again it was not until the first quarter of the 19th century that gold largely supplanted the use of silver or pewter. Some notable exceptions did occur, as at Harvard, which until the first decade of the twentieth century continued the use of silver or pewter for some of its keys.

Though several stylistic details have survived since the earliest days -- the use of the stars, pointing hand, and Greek letters on the obverse, for example -- notable differences exist between older keys and current examples. The name of the recipient was not engraved on the earliest fobs or keys, and was not until the first decade of the nineteenth century. The name of the school from which the fob or key came was also not routinely included on the earliest models, and sometimes the only way to trace a key to a particular school's chapter is by researching the name of the recipient against surviving class records. The number of stars on the obverse has also changed over the years, with never fewer than three, but on some known examples with as many as a dozen (the explanation as to the meaning of the stars in these early cases varies from chapter to chapter). Also, the date of the awarding of the honor is only seen on keys from the second quarter of the nineteenth century onward (some people mistake the date that appears on the fob or key -- December 5, 1776 -- as the date that a particular fob or key was awarded, when in fact it is merely the date of the founding of the society). Only in 1912 was the key made to a uniform standard of size, golden appearance (some are plated), and engraving with the school's name, recipient's name, and date of the award.