My students, technicians and I must have performed several hundred experiments with synchronous cells obtained with the baby machine. Some worked quite nicely but the ones I really cared about were never as pristine as required. The questionable experiments alli nvolved pulse-labeling synchronous cultures with radioactive precursors of various macromolecules, with primary interest in nucleic acids. I was distressed by what appeared to be minor but persistent inconsistencies in the uptake patterns in the first and second cycles of synchronous growth. Nothing I tried solved the problem. I vividly remember the very cold Buffalo night when I finally came to the decision, while leaving the lab and heading to the basically deserted car park to scrape the ice from my windshield, that I, at least, was incapable of growing E.coli synchronously without noticeable disturbance. What a miserable night. I simply could not understand why a technique that seemed so sound theoretically was not working properly2. That night I became firmly convinced that I had better do something else with my life because 8 years of beating my head against the wall was enough.