Charles Atlas Biography

For much of the 20th century Charles Atlas was America’s most famous muscle man. Atlas immigrated from Italy as a boy, and in his teens he built up his physique using a system of bodybuilding which he later dubbed “Dynamic Tension.” In 1928 he met businessman Charles Roman; the two men founded Charles Atlas, Ltd. and began selling bodybuilding courses by mail. Atlas advertisements appeared in comic books and magazines and made Atlas into a pop culture icon; his most famous ad, a cartoon in which a scrawny young man resolves to bulk up after a bully kicks sand in his face, ran for years. (Atlas also popularized the phrase “97-pound weakling.”) The company was a great success and continued on after Atlas’s death in 1972.