KALAMAZOO -- When Janice Newton, 67, of Kalamazoo, watches musicians on TV or attends a concert, she often wonders about their guitar strings. Just possibly, she had a hand in making those strings.

It looked like a white splotch on the underside of a Neanderthal stone tool. But a microscope showed it was a bunch of fibers twisted around each other. Further examination revealed it was the first ...

For the past 50 years, Dr. Stanley Gross has been hand-crafting orchestra string instruments in his spare time. Gross, a 97-year-old Greenwich resident, took up the hobby in 1960 during his years ...