US Scott #653 Trio - 1940 NY World's Fair Slogan Cancel

I'm sure this is very common, but I happened to come across this strip of stamps of a seemingly boring issue (US Scott #653, the 1/2c Nathan Hale definitive) and realized it had the Trylon and Perisphere slogan cancel on it from the NY World's Fair of 1939-40 (in this case, 1940):



I was curious about this for a couple of reasons, primiarly the recent Linn's Stamp News article about the 75th anniversary of first Artcraft first day cover, commemorating the NY World's Fair in 1939 and the indication that "they couldn't afford to license the use of the fair's symbols, the Trylon and Perisphere. However, Woodbury Engraving, which specialized in engraved stationery for businesses and had been printing envelopes for WSE, did have the rights to use the symbols, so ArtCraft was able to use the Woodbury design..."

That article can be found at this link:

http://linns.com/news/us-stamps/373...-anniversary

Which got me wondering if the Trylon and Perisphere symbols were only available for licensing at a presumably high cost, how did the US Post Office get to use the logo on their slogan cancel? Certainly, the post office wouldn't have been in a position to pay a high licensing fee. Would it have been that the post office was exempt from paying any licensing fee because of the promotion of the event on the US Mail?

Anyway, the 75th anniversary of that World's Fair was also mentioned in a recent New York Daily News article linked below:

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...le-1.1759608

It comments on how the impending war overseas (which the US hadn't yet gotten itself into) impacted the Fair ... and to a detail that I don't recall reading about previously that the US is especially sensitive to today, when two policeman were killed after a bomb detonated in a bag they had just carried out of the British pavilion on Independence Day 1940. What was especially surprising to me is that the culprit was never identified.

It is also interesting to note that the Trylon and Perisphere symbols were demolished after the Fair ended in October 1940 as the 40 million tons of steel used on those symbols -- (that's 80 BILLION pounds worth!) would have to be given over to the war effort!

Admittedly, I never really studied the 1939-40 World's Fair that closely, but found the above comments especially interesting.

Very interesting read wt1

Thanks for sharing.

It was The Good Old Days; the promoter would have asked the POD for a slogan cancel, and they would have cooperated as a public service.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey