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Quest for Flight - John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West (Paperback)
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Quest for Flight - John J. Montgomery and the Dawn of Aviation in the West (Paperback)
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The Wright brothers have long received the lion's share of credit
for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in
flying gliders twenty years before the Wright's powered flights at
Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing
accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who
piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled
flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western
Hemisphere.Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S.
Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to
take to the skies. They show that history's nearly exclusive focus
on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights
waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly
in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his
work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for
Montgomery's pioneering role in aeronautical innovation. As a
scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic
methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in
aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread
attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his
gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his
pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These
experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern
California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from
balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained,
demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery's designs, and helped
change society's attitude toward what was considered ""the
impossible art"" of aerial navigation. Inventors and aviators
working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth
century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and
Fogel place Montgomery's story and his exploits in the broader
context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the
reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation
industry from the very beginning.
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