MR. MCCARRY WRITES, “THERE WERE 23,215,000 [cows in America] in 1938. They produced a total of 105,807 million pounds of milk that year. Parallel figures for 1997 are 9,258,000 cows producing 156,602 pounds of milk.” Maybe we should revert to the good old days after all—or insert the word million between “156,602” and “pounds.”

A 62-YEAR-OLD MAN IS WALKING THROUGH a shopping mall, searching for a birthday present for his wife. Suddenly a lightness, a dizziness, fills his head. He quickly sits down, but the sensation doesn’t go away. He feels himself shrinking, like a balloon with the air rapidly escaping. Sounds reach him down an echoing corridor. He slumps to the floor. Before passers-by can react, he is clinically dead: His pulse and breathing have stopped. His brain, starved of oxygen, slips into unconsciousness.

T. A. HEPPENHEIMER’S “How THE Soviets Didn’t Beat Us to the Moon” (Summer 1999) was most informative. You may be interested to know that a remnant of the Soviet Union’s N-1 rocket is still around, and there are plans to use its engines once again.

AS AN ENGINEER AND A LONG-TIME student of industrial history, I found the article about Walter Chrysler (“‘I Like to Build Things,’” by Stephen Fox, Summer 1999) both interesting and informative. However, it failed to mention the importance of Charles W. Nash in his career. Chrysler credited Nash with giving him his start in the automotive industry.

“How do you make paper clips? People wonder about that,” says Charles Frohman. “Most people guess that you pour molten metal into a mold or die. Here’s how we really do it.” Frohman is executive vice president of Labelon/Noesting Company, in Mount Vernon, New York, one of three manufacturers of paper clips in the United States. We’re standing amid a bank of six 50- or 60-year-old machines, each of which is taking galvanized steel wire from a spool, straightening it, folding it, and cutting it into a paper clip.

AT FIRST GLANCE THE KITCHEN AT NATICK Labs looks like that of any cafeteria: oversized ovens, cavernous caldrons, long tables of shiny stainless steel. But a closer look reveals a peculiar—some would say sinister—edge. At 9:00 A.M. most of the monstrous machines stand silent, except for one that rhythmically shoots streams of beige paste into metal tubes, then crimps and caps them and sends them down the conveyer belt.

I peer into the chugging machinery.

“Toothpaste?”

Even after the death of the Model E, a handful of inventors kept pursuing steam-car research, seeking the same advantages that attracted Abner Doble: silence, power, simplicity, fuel efficiency, and low emissions. Their efforts all foundered, not only because of auto-industry indifference but also because of the weight of steam engines and the water they require and drivers’ unwillingness to wait half a minute to get up a head of steam.

SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON MARCH 12, 1928, a carpenter named Ace Hopewell rode his sputtering motorcycle through the darkness of San Francisquito Canyon, north of Los Angeles. With his headlight sweeping over the rough road, he drove cautiously alongside San Francisquito Creek, past a sleeping settlement around a hydroelectric station, and ascended a grade up the canyon wall. In the darkness ahead a monolith loomed 200 feet above the canyon floor.

I READ WITH MUCH INTEREST KELEY A. Giblin’s article “‘Fire in the Cockpit!’” in the Spring 1998 issue. Generally I believe it rather accurately reflects the consensus and posture at NASA as it has been distilled and is recorded in NASA files and publications. I have been trying for many years to get some modifying and corrective information incorporated into the record, but with only minor success so far.

ARCHEOLOGISTS DISCOVERED SEV eral pairs of modern-looking dice in an ancient Egyptian tomb. The sandstone cubes, which now reside in a Chicago museum, are “loaded” —weighted to favor twos and fives. Larceny, it seems, is as old as the Great Pyramids.

DURING THE PERSIAN GULF WAR, IN 1991, TELEVISION VIEWERS AROUND the world witnessed the new effectiveness of night military operations. Laser-guided missiles methodically destroyed Iraqi targets with near-pinpoint precision as tanks stormed the Kuwaiti desert, overwhelming Saddam Hussein’s Republican Army forces. Although the combat took place in the dead of night, we saw the footage as if it were noon, for the coalition forces and television crews covering the war were equipped with an assortment of devices for seeing in the dark. Gen.

OBERLIN, OHIO: Anyone who writes about women inventors must eventually face a stubborn truth: Most of the important things in history were invented by men. Most does not mean all, of course, and several large books have recently been published to catalogue the technological contributions of women. Yet if you listed the 100 most important inventions of all time and the key figures usually associated with each, no more than a small handful would be female.

ON NOVEMBER 7,1940, LEONARD COATSWORTH, A REPORTER FOR the Tacoma News Tribune , earned a small place in history as one of the last people on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In the four months since its opening, the bouncy bridge had become a bit of a tourist attraction. People came from miles around for the thrill of driving across the galloping span. But Coatsworth was no tourist, just a local toting a earful of beach gear and his daughter’s cocker spaniel.

I ENJOYED “DELIVERING THE FAX,” in the Spring 1999 issue (by George Mannes). If anyone wants to see what fax was like just before World War II, they should watch the 1937 movie Charlie Chan at the Opera , starring Warner Oland and Boris Karloff. In it the suspect’s photograph is transmitted across the country over the telephone lines, and how this is done is shown. The picture is attached to a cylinder that starts rotating.

The Apollo 1 Disaster

I READ WITH MUCH INTEREST KELEY A. Giblin’s article “‘Fire in the Cockpit!’” in the Spring 1998 issue. Generally I believe it rather accurately reflects the consensus and posture at NASA as it has been distilled and is recorded in NASA files and publications. I have been trying for many years to get some modifying and corrective information incorporated into the record, but with only minor success so far.

IF THINGS GO AS PLANNED , in 1999 the unmanned Lockheed-Martin X-33 rocket, the forerunner of America’s next generation of spaceships, will blast off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and soar up more than fifty miles before gliding unpowered to a soft runway landing.

STANFORD, CALIF. : In connection with this issue’s article on railroads and winter, John H.

JOSHUA HUMPHREYS’S IDEA OF A SUPER -frigate (“Six Ships That Shook the World,” by Roger Archibald, Fall 1997) was indeed a technological breakthrough that shook the naval establishments of Europe. It can also be viewed in terms of another European naval concept.

Six Ships That Shook the World

JOSHUA HUMPHREYS’S IDEA OF A SUPER -frigate (“Six Ships That Shook the World,” by Roger Archibald, Fall 1997) was indeed a technological breakthrough that shook the naval establishments of Europe. It can also be viewed in terms of another European naval concept.

SHORTLY AFTER HIS ELECTION TO THE U.S. SENATE, WARREN G. HARDING boarded a train in Washington, D.C., bound for New York. As Harding relaxed in a first-class club car, a well-dressed stranger approached.

“It’s good to see you again,” the stranger said warmly. The senator feigned familiarity and struck up a conversation. Eventually, joined by two other passengers, they began a game of auction bridge.