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I READ WITH GREAT INTER est Frederic D. Schwarz’s article about the oldest talkie (“Notes From the Field,” Spring 2003), which described the world’s oldest film with synchronized sound, recorded in Thomas Edison’s laboratory. It was fascinating, but I was sorry to reach the end of the article without finding the answer to a question that has puzzled me for several years: What piece was the violinist playing?

ABOUT 10 YEARS AGO a long-forgotten genre of popular instrumental music—full of gimmicky stereo effects and heavy on theremins, synthesizers, and similar otherworldly sounds —was dug up from the oblivion it had long inhabited and revived for today’s reflexively ironic youth under the name Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music.

MY THANKS TO TOM HUNT ington for “The Gimmick That Ate Hollywood,” which made the Spring 2003 issue a definite keeper. Those of us in the business the article is about have a saying, “3-D is the wave of the future—and always will be.”

IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY THERE WAS NO EASY WAY TO heat water. People generally used cookstoves to do it, but first they had to chop wood or lift heavy hods of coal, and then they had to kindle the fuel and stoke the fire. In cities the wealthy heated their water with gas made from coal, but it didn’t burn clean, the heater had to be lit every time they wanted hot water, and if they forgot to extinguish the flame, the tank could blow up. Moreover, in many areas wood or coal or coal gas was expensive and hard to find.

ON FEBRUARY 10, 2003, with government intelligence agencies indicating a high risk of terrorist attacks, the Department of Homeland Security advised Americans to prepare by keeping emergency supplies on hand. The requisites included food and water, a first-aid kit, and, in case of a biological or chemical attack, plastic sheeting and duct tape.

THE MOST DRAMATIC MOMENT DURING THE DETROIT auto show in January 2003 occurred at the Detroit Opera House. General Motors spent almost a million dollars turning the hall into a cocktail lounge and showroom and then used it to unveil its most audacious concept car in many years, the Cadillac Sixteen. A clear homage to the most glamorous automobiles of the 1920s and 1930s, the Sixteen includes a champagne refrigerator and a crystal Bulgari clock, but that’s not what caught everyone’s attention.

THOUGH QUITE INFORMA tive, Mr. Huntington’s piece contains a fundamental technical error in its explanation of anaglyphic stereography. It states that “in this system. … one [image] is projected through a red filter, making it invisible to the eye wearing the green lens, while the other is projected through a green filter, making it invisible to the eye wearing the red lens.” In fact the process works the opposite way.

I COMMEND BRIDGET Mintz Testa for her excellent article “Mission Control” (Spring 2003). You might like to know that there was also a second real-time computer facility during the Apollo program, in addition to Mission Control’s Real Time Computer Complex (RTCC). The Real Time Auxiliary Computing Complex (RTACC), located in the other wing of Building 30, was staffed by NASA and TRW engineers, and it performed computations for trajectory, mass properties, solar radiation, extravehicular-activity heat load, and numerous other matters.

I LOVED YOUR “POSTFIX” column about “windwashers” (by Arthur G. Sharp, Fall 2002). I am an 87-year-old former Seabee who was put ashore on Eniwetok Island in April 1944. I was promoted to stevedore, and our small group unloaded shiploads of supplies onto the island. Our work was quite dirty, the temperature sometimes reached 120 degrees, and fresh water was at a premium. We didn’t relish washing with saltwater.

THANK YOU, KEN ALDER , for “The Mis-Measure of All Things” (Fall 2002). This is a town that makes millions of gears and chains for the front-wheel drives of cars around the world, mostly metric but a mixed bag. The worst thing about converting to metric was what happened when the wine and liquor industry shifted. The half-gallon became 1.75 liters, but the price stayed the same—for almost 8 percent less. Beer stayed with the old system, as did surveyors and real estate. Try selling an acre in square meters.

After seeing the first Charlie’s Angels movie, a friend of ours gave the following capsule review: “They should have had fewer fights and blown more stuff up.” Readers with similar tastes will love implosionworld.com , a Web site that covers the demolition industry with news articles, reminis

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, WESTERN civilization was at the peak of its early intoxication with railroads. Everywhere dreamers were bent over maps, drawing lines. Walt Whitman wrote:

HALF A CENTURY AGO THIS AUTUMN TWO SMALL COMPANIES, working together, unveiled the world’s first transistor radio. It was called the Regency TR1. It introduced the revolutionary technology of the transistor to the general public, and it began the spread of all the miniaturized, battery-operated electronic devices that surround us today.

THE EARLIEST-KNOWN description of a pencil appears in a 1565 book on fossils by the Swiss naturalist Konrad Gesner, who noted a new type of writing instrument that employed “a sort of lead (which I have heard some call English antimony) shaved to a point and inserted in a wooden handle.” “English antimony” had been discovered earlier in the sixteenth century in or around the valley of Borrowdale in Cumberland, England.

The history of technology, once the province of buffs and collectors, has become academicized to the point where its practitioners may bear as many labels as a steamer trunk: externalist, social constructivist, feminist, Marxist, and so on. The best historians combine many approaches, and two of the most revered workers in the field have demonstrated their talents in new books: Human-Built World: How to Think About Technology and Culture , by Thomas P.

RUTH SCHWARTZ COWAN IS ONE OF A VERY FEW SPECIALISTS in the history of technology whose work is widely known among teachers and students of general American history.

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.

HELMETS, MORE THAN ANY OTHER TECHNOLOGY , defy conventional chronology. They seem to evolve like metallic and polymeric crustaceans, but not conventionally. A form may disappear for a thousand years and then reappear on a new branch. Another may keep its shape but change materials and habitats. Medievalists have advised the commanders of industrial armies, and armorers from dynasties of European craftsmen have helped tool up for new designs with classic jigs and hammers.

AFTER DECADES OF EXPERIMENTATION IN MANY COUNTRIES, THE FIRST PRACTICAL and fairly reliable typewriters arrived on the market in the early 1870s. Over the next 15 to 20 years, they became established in American offices, and soon they were considered indispensable. Yet they were ungainly beasts. The first widely popular model—the Remington No.

IMAGES OF THE EARLIEST AMERICAN TRANSPORTATION were recorded in many forms: engravings, oil paintings, even dainty watercolors. A less obvious medium was the black-on-white silhouette, once a cheap and easy way to create a portrait. This scissors-and-paper method produced an extraordinary image of the first passenger train to operate in New York State, on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad on August 9, 1831.