Torso Tech

THE ARTICLE ON THE BRA , by Curt Wohleber (“Object Lessons,” Spring 2003), brought to mind a little engineering book originally published in the 1963. Written and edited by Robert Baker, it was titled A Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown and contained engineering stress analyses written in lay terms, with each chapter a different illustration of stressanalysis investigation. The title essay was by Charles E. Seim. Years ago I used it in teaching an introductory engineering class. The connection just struck me as amusing.

Editors’ note: Seim’s essay —which contains passages like “since these evening gowns are worn to dances, an occasional horizontal force, shown in Figure 2 as i1 , is accidentally delivered to the beam at the point c, causing impact loading, which compresses all the fibers of the beam”—has taken on a new life as the inspiration for a work for a 70-piece orchestra, Stress Analysis of a Strapless Evening Gown , by Deborah Henson-Conant, a jazz harpist and composer. It includes a tango movement that Ms. Henson-Conant says “illustrates the forces which hold the world up” and a movement titled “Gossamer” that is “about the ephemeral quality of the fabric of life.” It was given its premiere by the Springfield, Massachusetts, Symphony in 2001.