THE LINE ON YOUR SUM mer 2004 cover featuring the electric guitar—“An invention that changed the whole world of music”—reminded me of the line that Life magazine used on its June 28, 1968, cover featuring me and my Jefferson Airplane band mates: “Music that’s hooked the whole vibrating world.” Just a few years earlier I had been immersed in traditional music on the acoustic guitar (as I am now again). I had eschewed all things electric.

IF, AS THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SAID, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then one can assert with equal justice that the Battle of Britain was won at the Stevens Hotel, in Chicago, on November 18, 1938. It was there, at the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, that Arthur E. Pew, vice president and head of research of the Sun Oil Company, described his company’s extraordinary new catalytic refining process.

Caught In Midair

CAN YOU GIVE US SOME insight into how Tyson V. Rininger got that stunning photo on the cover of the Winter 2005 issue?

FOR PROSPECTIVE PARENTS WHO CARRY THE GENES FOR a hereditary disease, one of the greatest fears is passing it to their children. Such a disease can usually be detected during pregnancy, and the pregnancy can be terminated if the parents wish. But many couples have religious or moral objections to abortion, and in any case, the procedure is always stressful.

I WAS DRIVING BACK FROM A LATE-NIGHT GROCERY run when I saw it, that unmistakable curving tail, silhouetted motionless against the dark sky. It was part of a B-17G, the celebrated Flying Fortress of World War II. I stopped, parked, and discovered that I could walk right up to the beautifully preserved four-engine bomber. I studied it from all angles, awestruck to find myself alone with an icon of aviation history. It was an Oshkosh moment.

ON FEBRUARY 16, 2003, A BLIZZARD buried the East Coast in up to two feet of snow. In most places life was disrupted for a few days with little lasting damage, but in Baltimore at least one building took a catastrophic hit: the B&O Railroad Museum, which occupied a roundhouse built in 1884 by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, America’s oldest. Half the museum’s roof collapsed, sending down snow, steel ribs, and roofing materials. It was the worst natural disaster ever to strike an American museum.

SIR HAROLD EVANS HAD AN UNUSUALLY RICH CAREER BEFORE he became a chronicler of our nation’s past. Born in 1928 in Manchester, England, he was among other things the editor of both the Sunday Times and the Times of London, editor in chief of the Atlantic Monthly Press, editorial director of U.S.

IT’S WONDERFUL TO IMAGINE HOW EXCITING IT MUST have been. Just picture yourself as a passenger on one of the trains that rolled past Thomas Edison’s workshops on summer nights in 1879. The newspapers were full of stories about the Wizard of Menlo Park and his latest project, an audacious plan to create a practical electric light and use it in vast numbers to illuminate all of downtown Manhattan.

STORIES OF ACCIDENTAL OR FORTUITOUS INVENTION HAVE a powerful appeal. Roy Plunkett finds an unfamiliar substance inside a gas canister and turns it into Teflon; Samuel Colt sees a ship’s wheel turn and uses the principle to invent his revolver. Alluring as such tales are, they obscure both the insight needed to take advantage of a chance observation and the hard work needed to develop it. In many cases, a simple origin myth like these can overshadow the extensive and detailed research that led to a world-changing invention.

JORMA KAUKONEN’S DE lightful tale of his personal conversion from acoustic to electric guitar (“Letters,” Winter 2005) leaves unaddressed some central issues about technological change. Here’s my take on his story.

WHEN ASTROTURF WAS FIRST INTRODUCED in baseball, no one knew quite what to make of it. The Astrodome, which not only had artificial turf but was also indoors, was basically written off as a freak, especially since the Astros were so bad. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, as fake grass was installed in St. Louis, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and elsewhere, people began to pay more attention to how it was changing baseball.

TEXAS ARCHITECTS HAVE MORE REASON THAN THEIR neighbors to remember the Alamo: This old missionturned-fortress was designed to provide coolness. Like many other buildings in the region, it has thick adobe walls. These served as insulation, keeping heat out of the building during the day and, once warmed, helping make the interior comfortable during the chill of night.

Father Knew Best

THE SPRING 2005 ARTI cle on the history of the microwave oven (“‘The Greatest Discovery Since Fire,’” by William Hammack) reminds me of how my father saved the day for Raytheon. In 1958 a newfangled gadget called a Radarange was brought to Minnesota Power and Light in Duluth for a demonstration. Appliances were a big thing for power companies in those days, and this was one big appliance. The day before the demonstration, the unit was set up and tested, and it failed to operate. Nobody knew how to fix it.

DEWITT CLINTON PARK, IN HELL’S KITCHEN, IS PRETTY TYPI cal for New York City. It’s open to anyone with a ball to kick I or a Frisbee to toss, which means that it has been beaten nearly to death by overuse. The park has natural-grass baseball fields, though there is little grass to be seen on them. It’s more like a sea of dirt, pocked with holes and a few struggling patches of green.

ONLY 29 JAPANESE AIRCRAFT WERE SHOT DOWN DURING THE MASSIVE attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but enough bodies were recovered from the wrecks to reveal something very surprising. Many of the men had been wrapped almost mummy-style in tight, constrictive bindings, from the abdomen down to the ankles.

WILEY POST WAS AN EIGHTH-GRADE DROPOUT who had served a year in prison for stealing a car. But after he lost an eye in an accident while working in an oil field, he used part of the $1,698 settlement to buy and restore an airplane, and by 1931, when he was 32, he was a world-famous record-breaking aviator. Three years later he was flying higher than anyone had before, with the help of the world’s first pressurized flight suit, which he had conceived himself.

PRESERVING FOOD WITH RADIATION sounds very space-age, but in fact it was discovered before the first airplane flew. In 1898 Samuel Prescott, a professor of biology at MIT, subjected various foodstuffs to gamma rays and found that spoilage was greatly retarded. In another early triumph, he used bacteriology to extend the shelf life of canned goods. Prescott went on to become MIT’s dean of science, and in that role he continued his career-long goal of applying scientific methods to the improvement of everyday life.

CAN YOU GIVE US SOME insight into how Tyson V. Rininger got that stunning photo on the cover of the Winter 2005 issue?

CHARLES STRITE HAD seen enough burnt toast in the company cafeteria at his factory in Stillwater, Minnesota. Rather than complain (though he probably did that as well), Strite, a master mechanic, took things into his own hands.

SOME ORGANIZATIONS, MOST NOTABLY NASA DURING ITS APOLLO PROGRAM, have always favored stand-up meetings, in which the lack of seats encourages brief, to-the-point exchanges of important information, after which everyone can get back to work. Publishing tends to attract less driven types, with most sit-down meetings divided equally between yarn-spinning and desultory discussion of work. A former editor in chief of this magazine was more businesslike than most, but even he had a weakness.