The annual banquet at the 2000 SHOT conference in Munich provided evening of memorable juxtapositions. The event took place in a stunn modern airplane hangar, its vast glass doors open to the mid-August streaming late across the surrounding Oberschleissheim Airfield. The f constructed by the Royal Bavarian Flying Corps beginning in 1912, has a history. It is now the ideal setting for the superb historic aviation collec of the Deutsches Museum. With old planes all around, it was also an setting for historians of technology to eat, drink, and be merry. But S president, Terry Reynolds, had some pretty serious messages to impart i presidential address. His title was benign enough:" On Not Burning Bri Valuing the Passe." 1 But his substance was nearly an accusation. In Reyn view, newer analytic frames in technological history had made older proaches appear obsolete. This was a problem, he asserted, because" th approaches may offer better bridges to certain of our external audiences our most avant-garde scholarship." 2 He counted engineering as one s external audience. 3 Reynolds's listeners at the banquet appeared to tak remarks as one of those castor-oil moments, despite the impressive set whether the medicine was vital or useless, it seemed that most folks disl the taste and wanted to put it behind them quickly.