I dug around the Interwebs for more information on the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. One of the first things I learned was that it wasn't a proper World's Fair. There's a committee that would assign out the World Fairs and they decided that it wasn't the US' turn for a Fair, just because some guys in New York wanted to run one meant nothing. Since it wasn't the first time New York had said 'We're having a World's Fair whether or not you like it', they did so again. They were still trying to pay off the 1939 'World's Fair' they'd held. As a result, since it wasn't an official World's Fair, a number of the larger countries didn't attend. In the end, this Fair still didn't make money for the Fair grounds. Some of the buildings still sit there today.
The Sinclair Oil Company sponsored a 'Dinoland' exhibit. This was in accord with their logo which featured the creature formerly known as a Brontosaurus. They had a number of dinosaur models on display with some audio commentary to explain the creatures in more detail. Very nice information but it was just text. It didn't give me any clue if the Stegosaurus they mentioned looked anything like the one I'd been looking at for 25 years. I found a reproduction of the original booklet from the Fair. Still, what were the odds that the Sinclair page would have a picture of the Stegosaurus?
Again, really good.
I flipped through the PDF file to the Sinclair page, saw the black and white picture atop the page and said 'Well, that settles that.' The face of the Stegosaurus was the one I was familiar with, so, question answered. Steggy was from the Sinclair exhibit. Right?
Of course, it wasn't that easy. Everything had been too easy to lead me to this conclusion. There had to be more. There was.
Another site had a LOT more detail on the World's Fair. The gentleman that runs it has written two books on the Fair and its exhibits so he was bound to know something about it. He had color pictures of all the dinosaurs as they were on display at the Fair. Excellent, excellent pictures. This was clearly Steggy there. He also had a 'where are they now?' type page for the dinosaur models from 'Dinoland'. He had the Stegosaurus from the Fair as being on display in Utah.
Huh? The Museum was saying that their Stegosaurus was the one from the Fair and yet this guy was saying it was in Utah. He did say that the Struthiomimus model from the rear of the T-Rex/Triceratops diorama was from the 64-65 World's Fair.
Someone was confused but who? The Museum that I had a history of trusting? This gentleman I'd just 'met' but seemed to know his stuff?
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