Is retro-fitting really ‘retro? 

I read in the New Yorker about people who make sound effects ‘in a large, retrofitted barn, painted baby blue’. It made me wonder again how people imagine retrofitting works. It seems to be the work of time-travellers. Do they think that refitting a barn now implies that a photo taken of it 50 years ago would show the new fittings?

Retro– signifies ‘backwards’. I am quite retro. I like looking at the past. My husband is almost entirely so. He lives in it.

Six centuries ago a child of ten was expected to understand what the retrograde movement of a planet entailed. A planet such as Mars appears to pause in its motion eastwards and loop in a contrary direction before resuming its eastward course.

Today we like to think the planets orbit the sun. The closest, Mercury, moves sometimes in its elliptical orbit more rapidly than it spins. From a point on its surface, the sun appears to begin rising, then sets before rising again.