Spring/Summer 1991

Bicycles, motorcycles, aircraft—if it went fast, Glenn Curtiss built it, improved it, and made it even faster

Niels Christensen invented a basic component of modern industry—the O-ring—entirely alone and without fully understanding how it worked

The tools for growing corn have changed so completely in this century that the way it was done eighty years ago is all but unrecognizable today

Critics said no steamboat could make it across the Atlantic. Junius Smith disagreed, and in the end he overcame every obstacle. Almost.

The town needed water if it was ever to grow into a major city. William Mulholland brought the water from hundreds of miles away, despite big natural obstacles and enormous human ones.