The Emmy Statuette - CBS News A lifesize Emmy statuette is on display Oct. 7, 2001, at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Calif. Height: 15 inches tall from base to tip Weight: 5 pounds Composition: Pewter, iron, zinc and gold Manufacture: Each one takes five and one-half hours to be hand cast, smoothed, buffed, and hand polished. The statues are handled with white gloves so as to leave no fingerprints. History: With 47 statuette designs on the table in 1948, academy members selected a proposal that television engineer Louis McManus modeled after his wife. The winged female holding an atom has since been presented to hundreds of actors, producers, animators, newscasters, musicians, dancers, newscasters, reporters and others who have worked in the television medium. The statue's wings represent the "muse of art" and the atom the "electron of science." Name: The founder of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Syd Cassyd, suggesting naming the golden statuette "Ike," the nickname for the television iconoscope tube. But with a national war hero and future U.S. president named Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower, the academy decided to find another name. Harry Lubcke, a pioneer television engineer and the third academy president, suggested "Immy," a term commonly used for the early image orthicon camera. The name stuck and was later modified to Emmy, which members thought was more appropriate for a female symbol. Source: Academy of Television Arts and Sciences