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there is a third elementry school named after John J Montgomery, John J Montgomery elementry School in San Jose CA
A reliable source for this date seem to be entirely lacking in all the print sources I have & does not seem to be in any of the online references either. Some of which are highly suspect. TheLongTone ( talk) 21:30, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
A lot of material has recently beein added by User:Historianav8shon. If I read the cites correctly this is all unpublished material, citing of which is original research. TheLongTone ( talk) 14:27, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
On the subject of the Chanute book that keeps coming up. In the "Progress in Flying Machine" article Chanute is speaking as an interpreter of another person's work (Montgomery) and at no point in his article does he use quotations or use the term "I". I have preferred to use primary sources in divulging Montgomery's story as it removed the possibility of introducing errors that can come in relying on secondary sources. If you absolutely insist on inserting content that comes out of secondary sources, then you should (i believe) acknowledge the various other authors who also wrote articles or sections based on material provided directly to them by Montgomery. As examples, there is Kavanagh (1905a, 1905b), several newspaper interviews in 1905, Ernest L. Jones (1909, 1910, 1911), John H. Ledeboer (1910), Lougheed (1909, 1910, 1911, 1912) or Albert Zahm (1923 based on his exposure to JJ's speech at the 1893 conference). You will note that Chanute was the only one of those secondary sources who implied there was but one flight accomplished and the two subsequent craft were failures. The rest of these sources are in line with the primary source when they stated otr in some cases implied that a plurality of flights were made with each craft. Chaunte had the least interaction with Montgomery compared with the others and was writing compiling his interpretations of over 100 other experiments. For this reason he was willing to admit to one correspondent "If it will be of any satisfaction to you to criticize some of my mistakes in print, you can do so; I dare say you can find plenty of them"...(OC to A. De Bausset, 11/13/1900). I note his being frequently corrected by the wrights in their correspondence. I personally am willing to explore the narrative through review of the primary sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Historianav8shon ( talk • contribs) 21:56, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Since you (TheLongTone) have repeatedly deleted any statements made that suggest that Montgomery made anything more than one glide in the 1880's it appears we have reached a stalemate on this particular issue. I am trying to understand the logic involved. Are you making these edits/deletions because 1) you believe that a single (secondary) source provides the definitive version of events they never had any first hand knowledge of, or 2) the timing (point in time) when a secondary source publishes their interpretations on another's work (i.e., Chanute on Montgomery) makes it definitive and makes all subsequent statements by the experimenter (i.e., Montgomery on Montgomery) so irrelevant that their subsequent (in terms of point in time) published comments are to be summarily ignored? Additionally, how do the other sources I cited come into play here? Why have you singled out Zahm and Lougheed and what does their attitude toward the Wright Brothers (post 1909) have anything to do with any of this? Historianav8shon ( talk)Historianav8shon Historianav8shon ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 23:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
Contemporary mainstream historians...for instance the Smithsonian... do not credit these claims. This is why I have amended your edits to make clear that they are claims which are not generally credited. TheLongTone ( talk) 10:53, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps my failure to breach the loggerhead on the specific topic of Montgomery's earliest flight experiments comes from the fact that I am new to Wikipedia and not well familiar with the guidelines. Just as I was grappling with your previous justifications for your edits (which i admit perplexed me) I am offered a new justification (stated broadly; "Contemporary mainstream historians do not support these claims") and you offer one example coming out of that apparent consensus; The Smithsonian. Has the Smithsonian engaged is a survey of historians (not just Wright Brother's biographers)? The link that you provide as a reference in support of that claim (on the main Wiki page) goes to a Smithsonian webpage that discusses Montgomery briefly but says nothing at all about the early Montgomery flight experiments. Over the last 25 or so years i have surveyed a large number and variety of sources on aviation history including those on Montgomery and while I am aware of a distinct bias coming from the various Wright Brothers' biographers on Montgomery, I am not aware of the consensus you refer to. I know what Montgomery claims actually were and am quite aware of how he has been perceived and presented in the literature both in the period and more recently. Inform me please. Historianav8shon ( talk) 15:08, 13 March 2015 (UTC)Historianav8shon Historianav8shon ( talk)
I've been reading the discussion and it might be well for all to remember that a neutral tone in the presentation of the referenced material is what Wiki expects. I would not like to see the discussion degenerate into a grudge match between two biased and opinionated camps. For instance, perhaps TheLongTone could share why V. Loughead is characterized as a "thoroughly unreliable" source... on what basis is that judgement made ? Carroll F. Gray ( talk) 18:04, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
The Smithsonian reference that has been inserted twice to support a broad claim (how contemporary historians view Montgomery's claims about the 1880's....) is actually a link to a page that does touch on Montgomery pre-1900 activities at all. Historianav8shon ( talk)Historianav8shon Historianav8shon ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:03, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
Forgive me for bringing this up again TheLongTalk but offering a statement about the conclusions of "contemporary historians" is comprehensive and suggests a series of references will be provided but instead a single source is provided. I believe that is what the guidelines suggest. Otherwise i should think that you would refrain from the broad statement and state what you have the references for. By the way, the reference webpage you provided (the Smithsonian NASM) has him flying up to 630 feet in the 1880's (Montgomery said 600, Chanute said 100) and extends his experiments with the tandem wing back to the 1890s (Montgomery said 1904, Chanute said 1904 in his 1905 article). Given that the Wright Brothers biographers and the Smithsonian NASM have traditionally only allowed Chanute as authority on Montgomery it would seem that contemporary historians at the Smithsonian have engaged in new research. 68.170.182.138 ( talk)Historianav8shon 68.170.182.138 ( talk)
For what it's worth, David Wragg's books on aviation and flight all suffer to one degree or another from the overly broad brush he uses. For instance, his book "Bombers From the First World War to Kosovo" doesn't include the Handley Page 0-400 in the section on WWI, and only offers the briefest of comments on the Gotha series. There are more such lapses in this book and in others he has written. He writes in a very agreeable style but his lack of depth of knowledge shows. Mr. Wragg erroneously cites 1883 as the year of JJM's first monoplane glider and his source for stating the successful glide of JJM "... crashed on take-off..." eludes me, and as we know, the Smithsonian NASM site credits JJM with a significant glide that first time, making no mention of some supposed "crash" "on take-off" - I would certainly shy away from using any comments and conclusions about Montgomery from Mr. Wragg. Carroll F. Gray ( talk) 06:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
The Smithsonian site (it you click on the full description tag... I hate these urls that lead to a page that need more clicks) says "The most significant was a monoplane glider spanning slightly more than 6 m (20 ft), and with it he made a glide between 100-200 m (325-650 ft) at Otay Mesa, California, in the summer of 1884. The glider had little means of control and was not flown again". If the most significant glider flew once, I would have thought that ints a very reasonable inference that the others didn't. Again, technically OR??. I'd agree with the assessment of Wragg, but as commented mhatever his merits as ahistorian he is in all probability reflecting the gerneral consensus. And regarding Victor Loughhead, what I meant was that he is unreliable in some matters because fram what I've read... largely in biographies of the Wright Brothers but also elsewhere suggest that he had an agenda of boosting Montgomery's significance in order to belittle the Wright Brothers. TheLongTone ( talk) 15:00, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
In terms of the discussion of presentations by published historians something that is very important to keep in mind is that Montgomery and the Wrights were adversaries. No Wright Brother's biographer, and very few other authors has ever established that context for their readers. Few authors have noted that Montgomery actually described his own experiments to his peers either in lectures or publications (including prominent newspapers, aeronautical journals and books) that fall within the mainstream of aviation literature (excepting for the New York, Chicago and San Francisco newspapers). This is relevant. The Montgomery/Wright adversarial relationship stems from Montgomery's public criticisms and challenges in 1909-1910 to the Wrights' claims and his Heirs' later legal cases (of which Orville was a key witness for the opposition-defendants).
In 1912 Orville reviewed the manuscript of the proposed book "Practical Aeronautics" and in correspondence with the author (Hayward) he objected to a mention of Montgomery and an early use of a form of wing warping, however within that same passage in the text was a paraphrased description of JJM's early gliding flights based on one of Montgomery's published accounts - not Chanute's. Orville did not object to that content and the book was subsequently published with Orville's introduction. Orville was repeatedly exposed to Montgomery's own descriptions of his earliest flights, but it wasn't until 1944 that the notion of Chanute as providing the authentic account was finally asserted by Orville. The stream of anti-Montgomery articles by Wright advocates in the period 1944-1951, and all subsequent Wright biographies with mention of Montgomery from from that period forward placed Montgomery in a new context (dismissively, and with creative logic) based on talking points identical to Orville's, all the while failing to mention that Montgomery had offered his own account. Note that Chanute published his discussion (stated consistently in the 2nd person narrative) about Montgomery's flight experiments in the December, 1893 issue of Aeronautics and then that same article the following year was included in the compilation (his book) "Progress in Flying Machines (1894). Personal correspondence between Chanute and Montgomery in 1895 (after Chanute's article/book) shows that Montgomery assumed Chanute would publish his (2nd) Chicago (1893) lecture on the 1880's machines/experiments but Chanute instead withheld the transcript of the speech from publication because he thought that Montgomery had intended to apply for patent protection (i.e., "you did, at my request give me an account of your experiments, but i thought that I understood distinctly that you did not want them published"). Hence Chanute's passages in Progress in Flying Machines were Chanute's own and were made while under the impression that Montgomery intended to seek patent protection. His passages are neither definitive nor are they complete. Thus we have the perplexing situation of Mr. Chanute as an absolute second-hand authority on experiments described to him, and providing an account that should be precisely followed. Many authors have written about Montgomery (on the order of at least a few hundred by last count) and many have credited Montgomery with having made gliding flights in the 1880's. Historianav8shon ( talk)Historianav8shon Historianav8shon ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 16:39, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
That seems a very plausible explanation of why Chanute's account differs, & imo ought to be included in the article is of course it can be relably referenced. TheLongTone ( talk) 13:22, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
This article has missing some information and citations about the California Historical Landmarks in Santa Clara County, which includes the landmark: Montgomery Hill. Please use the Template:Infobox historic site or just update the article with the following additions: citation #1, citation #2, and citation #3. Greg Henderson ( talk) 22:50, 26 September 2023 (UTC)