“Flashing over the foam, gliding on the wave-tops—Akwa-Skeeing is at once the safest and most thrilling of water sports.” Thus began Fred Waller’s first advertisement for the water skis he patented in 1925. Dolphin Akwa-Skees were said to “glide on the surface of the water behind a power-boat.… You toss the skees overside and step on them while the boat is in motion.” They were sold by Abercrombie & Fitch and Marshall Field and at shipyards.

In the fall of 1958, which was already a year of scientific wonders, plans were announced in the technical and popular press for what promised to be an amazing undertaking. A group of American geophysicists were going to drill a hole several miles beneath the sea floor all the way to the remote interior of the planet—the vast nucleus of dense, compacted rock known as the mantle.

Except perhaps for sumo wrestling, every sport uses some sort of equipment. In some, such as auto racing, advances in equipment are a major part of the sport, while in others, such as basketball, their main role is to separate teen-agers from their money. Somewhere in between these two extremes lies the game of golf.

Learning To Engineer

I greatly appreciate “How Engineers Lose Touch” (by Eugene S. Ferguson) in the Winter 1993 issue of your magazine. I have never forgotten the frustration I experienced as an engineering student in the sixties when I discovered that many of my fellow students, who were doing much better than me academically, hadn’t the slightest idea which way to turn a nut, little intuition about how to put things together, and no feel for materials.

I enjoyed reading the article on interurban trolleys in the Spring 1993 issue (“The Wrong Track,” by George W. Hilton). One of those trolley lines ran from Dayton to Springfield, Ohio, and passed the Huffman Prairie, a cow pasture used by the Wright Brothers in 1904 and 1905 to conduct their flying experiments to make their airplane a practical and useful machine. They knew that Kitty Hawk was only the beginning. One reason they selected this site was that they could get to it by trolley, since there was a station near where they lived, about eight miles out of Dayton.

Long before the Spanish settlers, and long before the Pueblo Indians, a vanished , people built extensive irrigation canals in a corner of the Southwest. From about A.D. 300 to 1400, the Hohokam inhabited the arid region that is now southcentral Arizona, around the modern-day site of Phoenix. Today’s Pima Indians gave the Hohokam their name; it has been translated as “all used up,” “the ancient ones,” “people who have gone,” and similar phrases.

Lafayette, Indiana, in 1859 was by far the largest of the two dozen or so American towns named for the French general. Its nearly ten thousand citizens were proud of their newspapers, their breweries, and their town’s position as head of navigation on the Wabash.

“COME ON IN OUT OF THE MOSQUITOES,” SAYS DANIEL Martinek. He is standing next to a shotgun shack beside a stand of tall loblolly pines. “This is where I spent every day for thirty-five years. It looks like it’s over now.” Inside, line shafting runs down the middle of the single long room; muskrat hangers are suspended along either side. Connected to the shafting are a dozen small machines used in the manufacture of mother-of-pearl buttons. White pearl dust covers everything.

The Interurbans

I enjoyed reading the article on interurban trolleys in the Spring 1993 issue (“The Wrong Track,” by George W. Hilton). One of those trolley lines ran from Dayton to Springfield, Ohio, and passed the Huffman Prairie, a cow pasture used by the Wright Brothers in 1904 and 1905 to conduct their flying experiments to make their airplane a practical and useful machine. They knew that Kitty Hawk was only the beginning.

Ericsson’s caloric engine had four 2-part cylinders. The upper, or supply, cylinder drew in air from the outside and compressed it; in the lower, or working, cylinder the air was heated to provide power. The pistons in these two cylinders were connected with rigid rods; they moved in tandem. During a downstroke ambient air entered the supply cylinder while “used” air was exhausted from the working cylinder.

the year was 1893, and the Midwest was experiencing World’s Fair fever. Chicago’s town fathers, eager to show that their prairie city was more than just a cow town, had created a grand spectacle to celebrate (a year late) the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Columbus may have been the excuse, but from the day of its opening the theme of the Columbian Exposition, like that of most world’s fairs, was Progress.

As early as 1847 Daniel Webster could say without sounding ludicrous that the railroad “towers above all other inventions of this or the preceding age.” Indeed, by the 1860s American railroads had triumphed over competing forms of transport for most long-distance travel. Shippers welcomed the dependability of year-round rail service. It was cheaper than the turnpike, more flexible and direct than the canal packet or the steamboat, and much faster than any of these.

After reading the article “A Few Words About This Picture” (by Bobby Lowich, Fall 1992), I am left to wonder if old photographs can be trusted. Experience, however, has taught me that they do tell the truth, and that problems arise from interpretation. This is an interesting article, but I think the photo needs further study.

The year was 1893, and the Midwest was experiencing World’s Fair fever. Chicago’s town fathers, eager to show that their prairie city was more than just a cow town, had created a grand spectacle to celebrate (a year late) the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. Columbus may have been the excuse, but from the day of its opening the theme of the Columbian Exposition, like that of most world’s fairs, was Progress.

The humble, everyday coat hanger would seem to have existed unchanged forever. But in fact, its current pure form is the result of vigorous experimentation. As recently as 1897 Sears, Roebuck copywriters had to tell customers why they needed one in the first place (“Garments when hung on this device do not lose their shape as when hung on hook or nail”). Nevertheless, by then hangers existed in as many different forms as that more famous example of nineteenth-century inventive fecundity, the apple parer.

Early one October morning in 1939, an improbable vehicle lumbered out of Chicago on the first leg of a long and eventful trip to Boston. It looked like something from the mind of H. G. Wells, with its high, slanted turret and red and silver paint. It was so huge that the roads it traveled had to be closed to other traffic.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. : On a February weekend when the NBA’s All-Stars were in Utah for their annual contest, an equally stellar (though somewhat less wealthy) group assembled at the University of Virginia for a symposium on trends in technology. There were no acrobatic jams, but the scholars did occasionally slamdunk one another’s theories; and while they may not exactly have lit up any scoreboards, many impressive points were tallied.

In 1915 San Francisco threw a tremendous party—the Panama-Pacific International Exposition—to ratify the city’s recovery from the 1906 earthquake. Among the guests were several machines sent by the Lanston Monotype Company of Philadelphia to demonstrate the speed, fluency, and accuracy with which they cast type. These were in the care of a Massachusetts printer named George W. Mackenzie, and when the fair was over, he bought them and set up the first Monotype composition plant in San Francisco.

The men are gathered at eight o’clock in the cold, clear air of a late-April morning. Most have walked to the meeting, carrying long-handled shovels and bramble cutters on their shoulders. In groups of two or three they have ambled along the dusty gravel road overlooking New Mexico’s Valdez Valley until they reached the unmarked bend that serves as the meeting place. Others came crowded six to a pickup cab, then spilled out and grabbed shovels and hats from the back of the truck.

Benjamin Franklin, in charge of all things wise, was the American ambassador to France when he witnessed the successful ascent of an unmanned hydrogen-filled balloon on August 27, 1783. As the twelve-foot globe shot up in the sky until it seemed no bigger than an orange, a skeptic said the flight was interesting but wondered what use it could have. Franklin, our history primers tell us, growled, “What use is a new born babe?”