The official name of the Oscar statuette is the Academy Award of Merit. It takes about a week-and-a-half to create each Academy Award, made of gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians. The figurines cost an estimated $18,000, but are "worth millions to the recipients," says Scott Siegel, president of R.S. Owens.

Each statuette takes 40 hours of work to make. Once the plating is completed, the Oscar figure is screwed onto its metal base. Each statuette also is numbered. The academy began numbering statuettes in 1949, starting with No. 501. About 50 to 60 trophies are made every year in Chicago under tight security by manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company.

Each Oscar is dipped in electrically-charged bins of molten copper, nickel, silver and 24-carat gold and then lacquered to a blinding shine. Any statuettes that don't meet strict quality-control standards are immediately cut in half and melted down, according to the academy. After the awards, R.S. Owens also engraves the plates with the names of the winners and sends the plates out to Hollywood to be affixed to the statuettes.

MGM's art director Cedric Gibbons, one of the original Academy members, supervised the design of the award trophy by printing the design on scroll. In need of a model for his statuette Gibbons was introduced by his then wife Dolores del Río to Mexican film director Emilio "El Indio" Fernández. Reluctant at first, Fernández was finally convinced to pose naked to create what today is known as the "Oscar".

The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929 at a private dinner in Hollywood, with an audience of less than 250 people. Since the first year the awards have been publicly broadcast, at first by radio then by TV after 1953. During the first decade the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards. This method was ruined when the Los Angeles Times announced the winners before the ceremony began; as a result the Academy has since used a sealed envelope to reveal the name of the winners. Since 2002, the awards have been broadcast from the Kodak Theatre.