THE ELEGANT SOLUTION

Adventures in engineering, or the stories behind: the laying of the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1858, telephone cable in 1956; the Boeing 707, first jet passenger plane; Univac; the first nuclear submarine; Xerox. Also, more briefly, the largest bridge in the world--Lake Pontchartrain; the largest building--Vehicle Assembly Building at the JFK Space Center, Merritt Island, Fla; the tallest towers--the World Trade Center, Manhattan; the TWA passenger terminal at Kennedy. Finally, defying nature in the form of earthquakes by design, the Latino Americana Tower, Mexico. All are set down with a minimum of verbiage, a nucleus of technical fact. Adequate.