Throwback Thursday: In 1978, NTSB Buys New Seal
The National Transportation Safety Board spent $5,340 in 1978 — $24,256 in 2022 dollars — to change its seal, winning it a Golden Fleece Award as a runner up in June 1978.
Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave awards to wasteful and nonsensical spending, eventually handing out 168 Golden Fleece Awards between 1975 and 1988.
The NTSB, the independent government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation, felt that the old emblem had “too much of a bicentennial look to it,” Proxmire said, quoting an NTSB spokesman.
The agency’s officials also felt that the old seal displayed on the credentials and badges of investigators weren’t clear enough to identify them as government personnel, and that putting an eagle in the centerpiece of the new gold colored — rather than old silver colored — emblem would allow it to “subliminally get attention.”
The NTSB spent $740 to prepare the graphics for the new design, $300 to print new credentials for investigators, $50 for two new notary-public seals to authenticate documents, $500 for 150 printed paper emblems and $3,750 for 250 new badges.
The current emblem is largely based on the Great Seal of the United States. It has an American bald eagle with wings spread out, holding in its right talon an olive branch and in its left talon, a bundle of 13 arrows; above its head is a scroll inscribed “E Pluribus Unum.” The eagle is behind a shield with vertical stripes of alternating white and red, crowned by a field of blue.
“Although it is an unnecessary expenditure merely to upgrade the accessories and appurtenances of bureaucracy, it ran several lengths behind the June winner on merit and amount,” he said of the Golden Fleece award given to the Federal Highway Administration for spending $222,000 on a study of motorists attitudes toward large trucks.
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