Where does the stock "alien" design come from?

by Rejoicing_Tunicates

If you search for "free alien" or "alien clip art" on Google, you get this green or grey person with huge black eyes, a round head and no nose. Apart from the creature from the film "Alien," I think it's safe to say this is what comes to mind when someone hears the word "alien." Where does this design come from? Do we have an old science fiction story to thank, or perhaps is it based on a real report/sighting?

Thanks!

BezBezson

In the 1893 article "Man of the Year Million", science fiction author H. G. Wells envisioned the possibility of humanity transformed into a race of grey-skinned beings who were perhaps one meter tall, with big heads and large, oval-shaped pitch-black eyes. This description also appears for aliens in two of his other novels.
This is the earliest mention of the creatures that I can find.

In 1965, the look became popularised when newspaper reports of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction caught the public imagination. The descriptions given of the 'Zeta Reticulans' match the archetype.

In the early 80s, they also became linked with the Roswell indecent of 1947.

The term 'greys', which is what this alien archetype is generally known as, seems to originate with French sci-fi writer and ufologist Jimmy Guieu describing referring to them as "the little greys" in a 1988 TV interview.