IISS Logo Origins

[Narl]

My kids think the scout service logo with the 8-legged dinosaur thing is pretty cool. They want to know what that creature is and where it is from. Has anything ever been said about it?

 

[whulorigan]

My kids think the scout service logo with the 8-legged dinosaur thing is pretty cool. They want to know what that creature is and where it is from. Has anything ever been said about it?

It goes all the way back to Classic Traveller. The creature is a "Poni".

A researcher in the early Imperium, when suggesting logos for the IISS Communication Branch, came across an old and obscure reference in his database to the "Pony Express" on Old Terra. Seeing the similarity between the ancient "Poni Express" and the X-Boat System, he suggested that the symbol of the "Poni" carrying the dispatch rider was an apt symbol for the IISS X-Boat branch. Only much later was it discovered that the "Pony" being referred to in "Pony Express" was a much different creature than the "Poni", which was an entirely different animal from another world.

The anomalous logo stuck, nevertheless.

 

[Narl]

Perfect!

Is there a reference for that?

 

[Narl]

Found it in T5, page 579. Cool!

Edit: And in JTAS #6.

 

[Timerover51]

JTAS No. 6, page 12.

The xboat service emblem (above) was taken from a history of Terra
by Professor Dinimbue of the University of Sylea. The professor found records of an organization called the Pony Express, but her knowledge of old anglic was not complete enough to equate the word pony with the Terran horse. The professor translated the word as poni, a beast of burden used on several worlds of the Sylean Federation. When the xboat service was organized , the emblem was designed , even though by then the professor's mistake had been discovered.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I'm pretty sure the Poni is a related species to the famed Barsoomian thoat.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Solomani might think it's a representation of Odin's 8-legged steed Slepnir from Earth's old Norse Mythology.

 

[Timerover51]

Hmm, or a Siamese Twin sauropod dinosaur that did not fully develop?

Thoats seem a bit too stout for that.

And his mount! How can earthly words describe it! It towered ten feet at the shoulder; had four legs on either side; a broad flat tail, larger at the tip than at the root, and which it held straight out behind while running; a gaping mouth which split its head from its snout to its long, massive neck.

From Princess of Mars, by E. R. Burroughs, on Project Gutenberg.

Sleipner would be a possibility however.

 

[nats]

You mean this?