Jean Tinguely arrived in New York in 1960 for an exhibition at the Staempfli Gallery.  Pontus Hulten told me that I should ask him if he needed any help. He had received an  offer to build a sculpture in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art. I asked Tinguely,  ”What do you need?” His answer was, “bicycle wheels.” We gathered the material from  bicycle shops in New Jersey and the garbage dumps on the New Jersey flats. It took us  three weeks to build what he wanted, a self-destructing machine. With the help of my  
 friends at Bell Telephone Laboratories, we constructed timing and triggering devices to  release smoke, start a fire in a piano, break support members, and make noises. On the  evening of March 17, 1960, the machine, which Jean called Hommage to New York,  performed to a museum society audience with smoke billowing out from the structure  and the piano playing. It destroyed itself in 27 minutes. What remained of the machine  was carted back to the dumps in New Jersey.