Not heretofore known about snare drums

Without snares, a snare drum would sound like a tom-tom. K. knew this because his great-grandfather was a drummer boy before bugles came in. This arose because we were reading a review of a book about the Rolling Stones and there was commentary on how much behind-the-scenes detailed stuff there is in it about the music business and every possible subject remotely connected with it. An example given was from an interview with Charlie Watts, who was talking about a set of toy drums he was given as a child, still has, and used as percussion in one of their big recordings (can't remember which!). He talked about the snare drum in such a specific way that I stopped to think about why it's called that. K. immediately knew because of having played his great-grandfather's drum. The snares on it were catgut. This is a page with neat photographs and daguerreotypes of drummer boys. There are even companies making reproductions for battlefield re-enactments.