Henry Jamison "Jam" Handy (March 6, 1886 – November 13, 1983) was an American Olympic breaststroke swimmer, water polo player, and founder of the Jam Handy Organization (JHO), a producer of commercially sponsored motion pictures, slidefilms (later known as filmstrips), trade shows, industrial theater and multimedia training aids.

[1] Credited as the first person to imagine distance learning,[2] Handy made his first film in 1910 and presided over a company that produced an estimated 7,000 motion pictures and perhaps as many as 100,000 slidefilms before it was dissolved in 1983.

Twenty years later he was part of the Illinois Athletic Club water polo team at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France, again winning a bronze medal.

During that time he was working as a campus correspondent for the Chicago Tribune when on May 8 he wrote an article about a lecture in the Elocution 2 class given by Prof. Thomas C. Trueblood as a "course in lovemaking."

Handy went on to describe how Trueblood had dropped to a bended knee in order to demonstrate how to make an effective marriage proposal.

John T. McCutcheon, a Chicago Record Herald cartoonist, followed the next day with a cartoon about a "Professor Foxy Truesport" showing his class how to best make love.

It was during his time working on the advertising staff that Handy observed that informing and building up salespeople's enthusiasm for the products they were selling helped to move more merchandise.

With help from another associate, Handy began making and distributing films that showed consumers how to operate everyday products.

– a training film for sales managers at Chevrolet dealerships; which is also featured in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes Bride of the Monster and Manos: The Hands of Fate.

The Jam Handy Organization produced the first animated version of the new Christmas story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer[13] (1948), sponsored by retailer Montgomery Ward and directed by Max Fleischer.

Despite Handy's troubles with the University of Michigan, his son-in-law Max Mallon, granddaughter Susan Webb, and great-granddaughter Kathryn Tullis received degrees from the school.

The loss of those funds was responsible, during the year of his death, for the demise of Handy's agency, which had been located on East Grand Blvd in Detroit.