FOR YEARS, MOST PEO ple have regarded “pizza” and “frozen pizza” as two distinct species of food. Americans love pizza, especially when you can make a phone call and have it delivered to your door still hot from the oven. Frozen pizza, by contrast, was long considered the dinner of last resort. Frozen pizza has been around for at least 50 years, but only in the last decade have manufacturers been able to make one that rivals the quality of fresh-baked.

INVENTION & TECH nology used to have a column called “They’re Still There,” about antiquated industrial equipment that was still in use. Its author came to be known as the Grim Reaper because all too often, the subject of a column was shut down soon after publication. Sometimes, however, technology has the last laugh. “They’re Still There” is long gone, but two of its subjects that expired shortly after their write-ups have turned out to be surprisingly lively after all.

WITH MOST TECHNOLOGIES, ONE CAN look back and point to a certain period when development was at its most feverish. Who wouldn’t want to have lived in Detroit in the 1910s or Silicon Valley in the 1970s? Today’s cars and computers may run much more smoothly, but the thrill of seeing them take shape is long gone.

THE SPRING 2005 ARTI cle on the history of the microwave oven (“‘The Greatest Discovery Since Fire,’” by William Hammack) reminds me of how my father saved the day for Raytheon. In 1958 a newfangled gadget called a Radarange was brought to Minnesota Power and Light in Duluth for a demonstration. Appliances were a big thing for power companies in those days, and this was one big appliance. The day before the demonstration, the unit was set up and tested, and it failed to operate. Nobody knew how to fix it.

POLITICIANS LIKE TO call a feeble, shortterm patch-up of a major, long-term problem a “Band-Aid solution.” Some delegates at the 2004 Republican National Convention wore adhesive bandages with purple hearts to belittle an injury for which John Kerry had received a Purple Heart. But when Earle Dickson invented the adhesive bandage in 1920, he saw it as an ingenious and effective solution to a serious problem. In doing so, he created an immensely useful product as well as a universally recognized brand.

The Electric Guitar And Me

THE LINE ON YOUR SUM mer 2004 cover featuring the electric guitar—“An invention that changed the whole world of music”—reminded me of the line that Life magazine used on its June 28, 1968, cover featuring me and my Jefferson Airplane band mates: “Music that’s hooked the whole vibrating world.” Just a few years earlier I had been immersed in traditional music on the acoustic guitar (as I am now again). I had eschewed all things electric.

HISTORIANS LIKE TO ORGANIZE THEIR SUBJECT AROUND A single overarching theme. All of American history, for example, can be understood in terms of slavery and its aftermath, or the changing roles of women, or the development of technology. In the movie Zoolander (2001), American history is presented as a series of conspiracies by the fashion industry.

BEFORE DEPARTING ON HIS DOOMED MISSION ON FEB ruary 17, 1864, Lt. George Dixon slipped a $20 gold piece into his pocket. The young Confederate’s sweetheart had given him the coin for good luck, and so far it had worked better than she could have dreamed. At the Battle of Shiloh the coin had deflected a Union bullet and saved Dixon’s life. The lieutenant called the dented disk his “life preserver.”

THE LINE ON YOUR SUM mer 2004 cover featuring the electric guitar—“An invention that changed the whole world of music”—reminded me of the line that Life magazine used on its June 28, 1968, cover featuring me and my Jefferson Airplane band mates: “Music that’s hooked the whole vibrating world.” Just a few years earlier I had been immersed in traditional music on the acoustic guitar (as I am now again). I had eschewed all things electric.

IF, AS THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE SAID, the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then one can assert with equal justice that the Battle of Britain was won at the Stevens Hotel, in Chicago, on November 18, 1938. It was there, at the annual meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, that Arthur E. Pew, vice president and head of research of the Sun Oil Company, described his company’s extraordinary new catalytic refining process.

Caught In Midair

CAN YOU GIVE US SOME insight into how Tyson V. Rininger got that stunning photo on the cover of the Winter 2005 issue?

FOR PROSPECTIVE PARENTS WHO CARRY THE GENES FOR a hereditary disease, one of the greatest fears is passing it to their children. Such a disease can usually be detected during pregnancy, and the pregnancy can be terminated if the parents wish. But many couples have religious or moral objections to abortion, and in any case, the procedure is always stressful.

I WAS DRIVING BACK FROM A LATE-NIGHT GROCERY run when I saw it, that unmistakable curving tail, silhouetted motionless against the dark sky. It was part of a B-17G, the celebrated Flying Fortress of World War II. I stopped, parked, and discovered that I could walk right up to the beautifully preserved four-engine bomber. I studied it from all angles, awestruck to find myself alone with an icon of aviation history. It was an Oshkosh moment.

ON FEBRUARY 16, 2003, A BLIZZARD buried the East Coast in up to two feet of snow. In most places life was disrupted for a few days with little lasting damage, but in Baltimore at least one building took a catastrophic hit: the B&O Railroad Museum, which occupied a roundhouse built in 1884 by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, America’s oldest. Half the museum’s roof collapsed, sending down snow, steel ribs, and roofing materials. It was the worst natural disaster ever to strike an American museum.

SIR HAROLD EVANS HAD AN UNUSUALLY RICH CAREER BEFORE he became a chronicler of our nation’s past. Born in 1928 in Manchester, England, he was among other things the editor of both the Sunday Times and the Times of London, editor in chief of the Atlantic Monthly Press, editorial director of U.S.

IT’S WONDERFUL TO IMAGINE HOW EXCITING IT MUST have been. Just picture yourself as a passenger on one of the trains that rolled past Thomas Edison’s workshops on summer nights in 1879. The newspapers were full of stories about the Wizard of Menlo Park and his latest project, an audacious plan to create a practical electric light and use it in vast numbers to illuminate all of downtown Manhattan.

STORIES OF ACCIDENTAL OR FORTUITOUS INVENTION HAVE a powerful appeal. Roy Plunkett finds an unfamiliar substance inside a gas canister and turns it into Teflon; Samuel Colt sees a ship’s wheel turn and uses the principle to invent his revolver. Alluring as such tales are, they obscure both the insight needed to take advantage of a chance observation and the hard work needed to develop it. In many cases, a simple origin myth like these can overshadow the extensive and detailed research that led to a world-changing invention.

JORMA KAUKONEN’S DE lightful tale of his personal conversion from acoustic to electric guitar (“Letters,” Winter 2005) leaves unaddressed some central issues about technological change. Here’s my take on his story.

WHEN ASTROTURF WAS FIRST INTRODUCED in baseball, no one knew quite what to make of it. The Astrodome, which not only had artificial turf but was also indoors, was basically written off as a freak, especially since the Astros were so bad. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, as fake grass was installed in St. Louis, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and elsewhere, people began to pay more attention to how it was changing baseball.

TEXAS ARCHITECTS HAVE MORE REASON THAN THEIR neighbors to remember the Alamo: This old missionturned-fortress was designed to provide coolness. Like many other buildings in the region, it has thick adobe walls. These served as insulation, keeping heat out of the building during the day and, once warmed, helping make the interior comfortable during the chill of night.