Talk:Early flying machines

Where is da Vinci :-)
Strange - why You missed him. He is everywhere, possible in fridge too :-), but without jokes he is at least architect of something like flying glide. As I remember it can fly - at least for short distance... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.78.90.176 (talk) 04:33, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Merged
This article has been formed by the merger of:- List of early flying machines, First flying machine and Early flight. The talk pages are still at their original locations:- Talk:List of early flying machines, Talk:First flying machine and Talk:Early flight Petebutt (talk) 19:11, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Controversies sandbox
For controversies about the early flying machines a sandbox was created. Please add your claims with the references and the rest in there. After enough information is added the sandbox will be published as an article to be referred from the Early flying machines or from the inventors/airplanes articles directly. --Lsorin (talk) 21:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The controversies sandbox is an apology, not an encyclopedia article. The reader would have to know what is being apologized for before understanding why it was written. No references, no structure. Binksternet (talk) 15:03, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The idea was copied from the Featured article Apollo 11's hoax stories added to the [See also] section and to stop the continuous mess up of Early flying machines and their aviators articles in Wikipedia. --Lsorin (talk) 15:23, 5 October 2010 (UTC)


 * There is no sandbox article at the Apollo 11 "See also" section. Binksternet (talk) 01:46, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Merge First flying machine into Early flying machines
Obviously, we are having multiple and conflicting definitions of what constitutes the "true" flight. That's primarily causing the disputes about who flown first. I think the title "First flying machine" favors the childish "he-was-first/no-he-was-not" approach and unnecessarily heats up the disputes. Thus, I think it is better to merge everything into Early flying machines (and leave First flying machine as a redirect only). This way we will avoid duplicated and redundant efforts, and hopefully end up with a more balanced/NPOV article. --Kubanczyk (talk) 09:39, 8 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I would expect "first flying machine" to be as much about the conflict over who was first while early flying machines is part of "development of manned/powered flight". GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:39, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
 * About the conflict itself? In this case I think First flying machine controversy would be a much better title (per my comment above). --Kubanczyk (talk) 07:39, 9 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd say merge them. They cover much of the same ground. And as GraemeLeggett says, one would expect  'first flying machine' to be about the (dreary) conflict about who did what where and when, but 'first flying machine controversy' would be a better title. The lists obviously need conflating- and adding to. I'm no expert, but I know of at least one early 'birdman' not on either list.TheLongTone (talk) 17:11, 3 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that most of both articles should appear at Early flying machines. A separate article should be written about disputes regarding who flew first. Naturally, some of these two articles would appear in the dispute article. Binksternet (talk) 17:42, 3 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The controversy lies mostly in the eyes of those who believe that one or other got there first. On the whole I suspect mainstream opinion is that there is a broad swathe of individuals experimenting with ballons gliders kits and mixtures of all three from da Vinci forward to somewhere around Bleriot's crosschannel flight. And closer to Bleriot than da Vinci is the point at which the Wrights are credited with "successful" manned powered flight. To maintain an NPOV it would be better to describe each step and note what happened. And if an individual accomplishment has some dispute we should note it in passing (the detail should be in the relevant article on the individual or machine). To include the full story of every disputed claim would overwhelm the article but to try to write an article only on the controversies - while omitting the undisputed advances - risks forking and undue weight to minority views. GraemeLeggett (talk) 18:37, 3 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Good points. In all Wikipedia articles I generally favor incorporating controversy as it is encountered in the story of a topic, integrated into each relevant section rather than segregating it into its own section. I'm not married to the idea of a controversy article. Binksternet (talk) 19:14, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I think "First Flying Machine" should be eliminated as an article and its contents merged into "Early Flying Machines", with a redirect. The title (First Flying Machine) provocatively raises a question which the article does not, and cannot, ever answer. The introduction and opening sections of Early Flying Machines should be vastly simplified, eliminating its presumption of providing an "analysis" of debates and claims. All of that current verbiage is unreferenced, as its tag says. The article should basically be a "list", with very little expository text.

I suggest creating a new article, "First Aeroplane (Airplane) Controversy". Probably, people would battle over which word to use in the title, but I, for one, don't care, and parenthetical treatment, as shown, works for me. A "First Aero/Airplane Controversy" would be much more narrowly focused than First Flying Machine is now. All the airplane arguments and distinctions could be collected in one place. Each separate "airplane" article (Wright Brothers, Whitehead, Pearse, Ader, DuTemple, Mozhaiski, Langley, Santos Dumont, Jatho, Vuia, and maybe some others) could include a link to the "Controversy" article.

GraemeLeggett said: "to try to write an article only on the controversies - while omitting the undisputed advances - risks forking and undue weight to minority views."

Binksternet said: "I generally favor incorporating controversy as it is encountered in the story of a topic".

My idea of a first airplane controversy article seems to run counter to the above thoughts. But the article I have in mind would confine itself to the concept of the airplane--and would not try to cover the much more diffuse history of various other kinds of flying machines. Obviously, there would be some overlap with Early Flying Machines and with the individual airplane articles.

My point is that people don't care so much about who flew the first glider, or kite or dirigible, etc. What they do care about is the "first airplane". So that's where we could focus our attention with the article I'm suggesting. DonFB (talk) 21:04, 3 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Any separate on the 'contoversy' would need so much putting into context that it would inevitably duplicate much of this article. Having one article would make life simpler because otherwise there is the risk of two articles saying contracdictory things.TheLongTone (talk) 13:03, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if the article acually says anything other than the rather obvious point that one needs to define ones terms in any arguement. There's an awful lot of repetion and desperate overqualification of statements.TheLongTone (talk) 19:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Consensus indicates that the two articles should be merged. The only thing left is for somebody to actually do it. Binksternet (talk) 15:10, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure I've fouled that up, but the relevant pages are really not very helpful.TheLongTone (talk) 22:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Units in the article
There is a major problem with the units.


 * The international system is the metric one; so the general text has to be : 3 m (10 ft) instead of 10 ft (3.0 m)
 * unit length is "m", abbrevation for "metre". "metre" is never used.
 * "Horsepower, meter, kilometer and kilowatt" do not exist > hp, m, km, kW

Examples in the text :
 * "with a 40 Horsepower (30 kilowatt)", to be 30 kW (40 hp)
 * "about two miles (3 kilometers) and seven mi (11 km)" to be "about 3 km (2 mi) and 11 km (7 mi). Note the mix of "km" and "kilometers"... and also the mix of miles and mi.
 * "a single-cylinder 10 horsepower (7.5 kW)", to be "a single-cylinder 7.5 kW (10 hp)".
 * " flight of 622.5 ft (189.7 m) to be "flight of 190 m (622 ft), rounded values. Plxd (talk) 10:28, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * There's a whole section in Wikipedia (guidance/MoS) about use of units, provision of alternate units and abbreviations.
 * Essentially, if an article has been written in one form (eg metric) then don't change it to another without a very good cause. That metric is now more common is not necessarily one. Be careful with unit conversions - apart from the fact that there are strange types of horsepower (eg British taxation type) - converting about 2 miles to about 3 km may be introducing significant errors (100s of metres - since 2 mile = 3.2 km). Don't change quoted text. Spell out units at first instance if uncommon (and a wikilink helps), and be careful with english spelling variations - if the article has been written in one form - eg meter, kilometer, color - then don't change it. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * in WP : "The International System of Units is the modern form of the metric system and is generally a system of units of measurement...It is the world's most widely used system of measurement, which is used both in everyday commerce and in science." Aviation is a part of science, you don't think so ?
 * "Be careful with unit conversions". Sorry, but I just copied the initial text.
 * "if the article has been written in one form". For instance "about two miles (3 kilometers) and seven mi (11 km)." There is not one form here, but two.
 * When SI units are used, they must be written according SI standards, m, km, kW for instance. Plxd (talk) 20:30, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, the metric system does dominate now in sciences but aviation is more engineering and it's only in articles specifically on scientific topics eg physics theory, chemical compounds etc that the SI units are mandated.
 * two miles (3 kilometers) and seven mi (11 km) is not two systems in use but a slight style mismatch.  "Two miles" is spelling out first use of unit and numbers less than 10 are often written out in full. "seven mi (11 km)" is abbreviating the unit on second use and spelling out a number less than 10. A tweak would be "two miles (3 km) and seven miles (11 km). Two forms would be "two miles (3 km).....5 kilometers" ie swapping from "Imperial" first to metric first. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I just had a look at use of units. I read : "... so the Moon is 380,000 kilometres (240,000 mi) from Earth". It seems very strange (to me) to use both styles (text and abbreviation) in the same sentence. 380 kilometres (240 miles) or 380 km (240 mi) would like more consistent. Maybe too simple... I agree that SI units are not mandated, but are to be correctly used (written). What is sure is that length symbols "m - km", generally used in SI countries, are rarely used in others; they prefer "meter", probably because "m" has no obvious sense in english.Plxd (talk) 21:20, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Abbreviations should generally be spelt out at first use, but the alternate unit is contracted because it is in the parentheses - effectively an aside that can be omitted if needed. "m" and "km" are well understood as the abbreviation for metre and kilometre in most English-speaking countries - not a consideration to worry about GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:42, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * According to "Which units to use", Wikipedia has adopted a system of writing a "main" unit followed by a conversion in parentheses. This article is non-science, but as international history, neither US-related, nor UK-related, so "All other articles: the main unit is generally an SI unit" apply, or would apply.Plxd (talk) 09:32, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Most of the early flying machine makers used miles and feet and horsepower when those machines were hopping and crashing. There is no good reason to make the metric system the main units used in this article. Binksternet (talk) 16:18, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * (1) "Most of ?..." In this article, 46 early flights inputs, of wich 25 are not using miles and feet system. (2) According this rationale, the "time" units system would be a good reason. So, a WP article about Roman empire should be written in roman language, with roman units (I, II, III, IV, X etc). See WP "Which units to use".Plxd (talk) 08:54, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Just to muddy the waters, early French practice was to use metric units of length & weight but hp for power....TheLongTone (talk) 23:03, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I think you missed Albrecht Berblinger.

Tidying up
This 'article' is a really horrible mess. Specifically, the same material is covered several times over: the section Claims to first piloted flight by date, and the tables in the section Table of flying machines headed More than design or literature & Historic records. There are a number of enties that are clearly in the wrong section here, something tha the confused layout encourages. I'm doing some drastic pruning: for a start, the records section should, in my opinion, only have generally accepted achievements.

The intro is also competely misleading: there is no analysis, and indeed if there was it would probably constitute OR.TheLongTone (talk) 21:33, 17 August 2012 (UTC)


 * There seems to have been a ping-pong match in which this article spent some time as a List of early flying machines. It certainly looks more like a list, or rather a set of lists, although I believe it has been merged from separate list articles. Worse, it is lists of early aviators and designers rather than of their machines. Related lists include List of firsts in aviation, Timeline of aviation and - most relevant to the bulk of this article's content - List of aviation pioneers. All that stuff needs moving across and editing down, with a completely new approach taken here, as indicated in the lead. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:29, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Chronological lists
I have now boiled several lists down to just these two. I am intending to merge the important facts from them into the main text, and ditch the rest. So it may not be worth tidying them too conscientiously. I believe they were merged in from several other places where they had no real home, and they don't really have a home here either, they just got dumped here as a starting point. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:14, 12 October 2013 (UTC) Forgot to say - if you feel like lending a hand.... &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:16, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The lists do have the virtue of providing a place for the inclusion of fringe/marginal figures like Wnek or Montgomery. Without the list I think that these figures would get shoehorned into a narrative of the major verified achievements.TheLongTone (talk) 20:36, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I see no need to keep the less notable figures, machines and non-first achievements in the present article, whether in the text or a subsidiary list. I considered a List of aviation achievements but I think the Timeline of aviation performs that function well enough. There is also the List of aviation pioneers where the individual figures belong. So I see it as more a case of migrating the lists than keeping them. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 15:43, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree in priciple - my concern is that these fringe characters tend to have enthusiastic supporters who will keep inserting 'information', and this tends to be done with scant regard to the overall structure of the article. I guess that's just Wikipedia, though.TheLongTone (talk) 16:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)


 * It's one of life's little trials. maintaining this page pales into insignificance compared with keeping the electromagnetic pulse article free of nuclear blackout fanboyz or the polygon article free of bored schoolkids. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:16, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The last "early" flying machine
When does the scope of this article end? Was the Wright Flyer I the last of the "early" machines, or do they run on until the end of the pioneer era at the outbreak of WWI? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:01, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I think one could go for one of three dates: the start of WWI, on the basis that after this point aircraft were flying well enough to make them weapons; 1909, Rheims meeting, where significant numbers of machines flew for useful times as the Europeans demonstrated they had absorbed the hard lessons the Wrights had delivered in the previous year: they came out of denial and into aircraft refinement, started setting records, Channel flown; or, indeed 1908, when the Wrights did their show. My choice would be 1909 (end of), with current methods turning productive and future prospects coming into focus. It's also, more significantly, the choice of Charles Gibbs-Smith, well regarded aero historian in his book "Early Flying Machines 1799-1909.TSRL (talk) 17:21, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I think the intended subject of this article was machines which have a claim to have acheived something for the first time. Substantially, this closes the article at 1903, athough there is a strong case for including some activity in France before the Wrights gave their demonstrations in 1908: ie Santos Dumont.  I appreciate the rationale of choosing 1909 as a cut-off, but even by that time there were a comparitively large number of 'flying machines', (inverted commas because many of them didn't really fly). Even setting the bar at the end of 1908 seems irrational: the 1907 Voisin and Cody's Army Aerplane No.1 (for example) do not, in my opinion, belong to the same category of experimentation as the existing content.TheLongTone (talk) 14:26, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
 * TSRL makes a very good argument. I agree that a cut-off date of 1 January 1910 is a good point in time. Mjroots (talk) 20:16, 24 August 2013 (UTC)


 * 1909 was indeed a watershed year for aviation, but for the flying machines themselves? I have been trying to find out when the problem of providing both stability and control in all three axes was finally understood and that understanding embodied in a flying machine. For example Dunne claimed that one of his types was the first stable and controllable aeroplane, but his D.5 did not fly convincingly until 1910 and even then lacked full three-axis control. In the same year the Wrights, after extensive experimentation, introduced the Model B, moving the horizontal control surface to the conventional (rear) position so that it could act as a stabilizer and replacing the landing skids with wheels so it no longer needed launching gear to get airborne. Whitehead's claims aside, IMHO 1910 is a better candidate year than 1909. But then, if we are to divide aircraft into convenient eras, 1914 is a far more common cutoff point. The fact that Gibbs-Smith chose to focus on 1799-1909 does not necessarily define the lifespan of "early flying machines." There is strong agreement in another thread that earlier gliders need to be included. Why not later aeroplanes too, as in the List of aircraft (pre-1914)? Or, are we to have a separate article on "Aircraft, 1910-1914"? I would suggest that continuing the present article up to 1914 is far more sensible. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:29, 29 August 2013 (UTC)


 * For fixed-wing aircraft, 1909 is a very satisfactory cutoff. It's the end of the 'maybe it'll fly' era and the beginning of the era when it was universally accepted that aircraft were a practical reality and the problems became those of perfecting the technology. In technical terms 1914 is pretty meaningless: its just a convenient line because of the outbreak of the Great War. As noted, there is an article 'list of pre-1914 aircraft'. Look at it and you will see a huge number of aircraft (and other things, like the Seddon Mayfly): I'd say that post 1906 few if any of these are particularly important. On the other hand, if being important from the point of view of the development of aircraft technology is the criterion, why have a date cutoff? which would make a nonsense of the 'early' in the title.TheLongTone (talk) 13:54, 30 August 2013 (UTC)


 * @TheLongTone, you haven't commented on the fact that stability and control were not successfully combined until 1910 (nor has anybody else). &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Do you have a particular 1910 machine in mind? I can't think of one off the top of my head. Also, the Bleriot IX & Farman III, both 1909 machines, continued in service until well into WW1.109.158.240.3 (talk) 23:08, 18 September 2013 (UTC)Ooops, wasn't logged on.TheLongTone (talk) 23:09, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * If you check back to my post above, you will see that I mention the Wright Model B and the Dunne D.5. Is that not sufficient? For the Wrights' preceding work see for example culick, F.E.C.; "The Wright Brothers: First Aeronautical Engineers and Test Pilots", AIAA Journal 4, issue 6, June 2003 Pages 1003-1004  and Engler, N.; "1909-1910 Wright Model AB", Just the facts, The Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company . I assume you mean the Bleriot XI (the IX never flew well). I don't know if this craft was stable in pitch - Angelucci and Matricardi describe it as "an efficient, if still not perfect, aircraft" - or if so, whether Bleriot understood why and told the world why (perhaps you have access to better sources than I and can answer that?). The Farman III was a three-surface design typical of the preceding years, i.e. it still had a foreplane because nobody yet understood what was going on there, and was to be made obsolete in 1910 by the introduction of the Wright Model B after they had figured it out. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:51, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I've been looking at "Airplane Stability and control" by Abzug and Larabee (Cambridge Aerospace Series). They give a brief historical introduction.  They take the view, as many others have, that the early pre-Wright pioneers, as far back as Cayley and through to Langley, had a fairly good idea of the importance of stability and that it could be achieved by a combination of a tail at the rear, dihedral on the wings and a c.o.g. in the right place.  They put less emphasis on control.   The Wrights consciously turned this around; as avid cyclists they knew that what you could control you could learn to fly/ride. They did later, rather slowly, move in the direction of more automatic stability, e.g. in 1904-5 removing the earlier anhedral (cathedral). The mixing of the Wrights' attitude and the European stability emphasis melded, post Rheims 1908, very rapidly, so that by November that year Levavasseur had built the Antoinette IV and Bleriot his type  XI (Paris Expo, 1908), both of which were inherently stable against roll and pitch (I think the early Bleriot XI was less stable in yaw, though I can't find the ref just now). There were still arguments about the optimum ratio of stability and control response to be had, continuing into WWI.  The Dunne seems to be widely regarded (with others) as too stable and unmanoeuvrable. Cheers,TSRL (talk) 19:35, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that's useful. I take it that 1908 date refers to the Antoinette, as Bleriot's type XI did not fly until 1909. So if it was Levavasseur who finally cracked the problem of combining stability with control, why choose 1909 rather than 1908 and not end the article with his Antoinette IV? Dunne is an odd case. His control system did not provide full three-axis control, and deliberately so - he was aware of the technical solution but felt that there was no real need for full control in a stable aircraft and his system was preferable because it made the plane simpler and safer to fly. He also stated that he believed his D.5 to be the first practical aircraft to combine adequate stability and control, but I do not know why he rejected such claims for the French types (one can hardly suppose that he did not know about them). I would suggest that while the Wrights and the British were in 1910 still digesting the lessons learned by the French, we are still in the era of early flying machines. Either way, 1909 seems squeezed out of the running. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 22:30, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

I'll offer 1910 as a possible cutoff year, based on the Wrights' decision to eliminate the canard and use a rear elevator as the most practical arrangement. Until then, their aircraft could be considered part of the "early" cohort, since they were continuing to use a "non-standard" configuration. Of course, other builder/aviators tried various configurations afterward, but the Wrights' status gives more weight to their decision, which could be considered to signify finality to the "early" period. DonFB (talk) 01:34, 20 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Just a couple of minor clarifications to the 1908 dates I mentioned above. The Atoinette IV was "rolled out" in November 1908; I've not found a flight date yet, though they did not usually hang about in those days.  The Bleriot XI was an exhibit at the Paris expo but still unflown.   This event was traditionally in December and the exact dates will be in Flight, but, as you say, it did not fly until 1909, on 18 January. It featured the first integrated control system, with stick and rudder.  Bleriot was very proud of this, rightly (the Antionette had separate controls for each axis, though it seems they were not hard to fly), and made much of its simplicity in his ads.  Arguably, it was the first modern aircraft, in some sense.  Cheers,TSRL (talk) 08:36, 20 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I think after 08 an aircraft really has to has something that makes it significant. There are in fact only two post-08 entries: Farbre's Hydravion (notable) and  the A. Vlaicu nr. 1, which I don't think remarkable.TheLongTone (talk) 22:43, 20 September 2013 (UTC)


 * There are many significant types long after 1908. That's the whole point of confining this article to the early ones. The question isn't whether the Hydravion is significant but whether it is early. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:06, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * On control and stability again, I spoke briefly yesterday to a pilot who takes the Shuttleworth's Deperdussin (1910) on some its rare hops. He said that it is stable in pitch and yaw, neutral in roll. He also remarked that was very hard to manoeuvre.  Too much stability can be hard work, as too little, and dangerous if you can't turn fast enough to miss the tree you thought you could climb over.TSRL (talk) 13:37, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

1909-1914 and the Pioneer Era
If Early flying machines stop ca. 1909 as suggested above and World War I Aviation starts in 1914, where do we tell the story of the inbetween years? It might make sense to create an article on the Pioneer era of aviation, but that is often said to start ca. 1900, which overlaps the last decade or so of the Early flying machines article. Options appear to be: Comments? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:21, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Cut back early flying machines at ca. 1900.
 * Extend early flying machines up to 1914 so no extra article is needed.
 * Accept a decade of overlap between the articles.
 * Leave the mess in place just because we can.


 * 17 December 1903 would appear to be a good start for the pioneer era that would give a six-year overlap. MilborneOne (talk) 17:31, 5 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't have a problem extending EarlyFM to 1914 (even though I've suggested 1910 as the cutoff). A Pioneer Era article is not a bad idea, although creating it just so 1909-1914 can be covered seems like an odd justification. Perhaps there's a way to insert the term 'pioneer era' and some text about it (or an actual subheading by that name) into this article. That might lessen any nagging feeling that there needs to be such an article. DonFB (talk) 18:37, 5 November 2013 (UTC)


 * EarlyFM could stop with the Wright Brothers' first flight, at which point the 'Pioneer Era' could be said to have begun. The latter is a vaguer notion anyway, which could stop e.g. when the first production line aircraft were sold (e.g. the Short Bros. factory making Wright Flyers) or could arguably be extended to include Bleriot, Alcock and Brown, Lindbergh, even Wrong-Way Corrigan etc., who were all pioneers in their fields.
 * Steelpillow's and DonFB's solution (Extend early flying machines up to 1914 so that no extra article is needed) removes the problems of somehow distinguishing between the two and of having an overlap. There is already a List of aviation pioneers, so that area is at least partially covered.--TraceyR (talk) 20:52, 5 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Here's a proposal for the introductory paragraph of the newly titled Pioneer Era subsection:
 * "Powered, controlled, manned flight was finally achieved early in the 20th Century. After the first successful flights, the remainder of the century's first decade came to be known as "The Pioneer Era," when the earliest aviators and builders improved their rudimentary flying machines and engines to the point where the aircraft were able to enter service performing reconnaissance, and soon thereafter, doing battle in WWI."
 * Comments? DonFB (talk) 08:01, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see a citation for the "pioneer era" and its span, there has been too much speculation by Wiki editors. It might also be appropriate to include those first powered flights in the "Pioneer era" too, how do the sources treat them? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:50, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I think (not that I'm citable!!) that there's an era of pioneer designer/constructors, ending at the end of 1909 and an aftermath "pioneer era" when the pioneers are pilots pushing the bondaries of speed, distance &c. This ends with the outbreak of part 1 of the 14-45 war.TheLongTone (talk) 17:03, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Just did some googling, especially in books. Everybody has a different take. The "pioneer era" begins when they want, say 1900 or 1911 and ends when they want, say 1909 or 1930. Even "Pioneer Aircraft: Early Aviation to 1914", ed. Philip Jarrett, never defines the "pioneer era" as such. Frankly, unless anybody can produce something a lot more definitive, I think we have to abandon the scope of the phrase as unverifiable. I'll wait a while before removing its topic heading, just in case. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Good information. It does seem as though the phrase should be included somewhere in at least one of the aviation history articles, since it crops up in various authoritative sources. Such text, wherever it might appear, could mention (with a ref or two) that the period varies according to different historians/scholars, rather than trying, with insufficient sourcing, to pin it down too specifically. The text could give a couple of actual year spans and explain that no one period is absolutely definitive. My thinking is that because the term exists in good sources, it should be mentioned/briefly explained somewhere in a suitable Wikipedia article; the History of Aviation article is probably the most appropriate. I'll look at some sources and see if it's possible to cobble together an encyclopedic sentence or two. DonFB (talk) 23:34, 12 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't see that the lack of a clear start date as a problem. There's consensus about the end. The beginning simply a matter of when the idea of pilots as a sepaate breed from constructors became common. The different start dates in titles surely simply reflect when individual authors want to start their story.TheLongTone (talk) 06:14, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

What is a "flying machine"
Do they include balloons, kites, gliders and/or unmanned models, or are they strictly just manned, powered, heavier-than-air craft? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:14, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * All of these, I think. The (full) OED has an example from the year I propose as the last "early" date (above):


 * "1909  Aeronautics Dec. 151   Any machine—'plane or dirigible"


 * Shows how it was used at the time. The OED entry for machine is long and diverse.TSRL (talk) 17:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * "Any machine—'plane or dirigible" does beg the question, what is a machine? My old Chambers 20th Century Dictionary gives simply, "Flying machine, a power-driven aircraft". Hence presumably the OED mention of a dirigible rather than balloons in general. All this would suggest that gliders, free-floating balloons and unpowered models are excluded. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:50, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Chanute wrote a book in 1894 called Progress in Flying Machines. He defined the flying machine as a heavier-than-air device based on moving mechanical parts such as beating wings or turning propeller; the requirement was for a "dynamical" means of progressing through the air under power. The balloon was definitely not included as it was lighter than air. Binksternet (talk) 19:49, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

EDIT ClASH
 * I'd missed the implication of dirigible and agree on that. Not clear that "'plane" excludes gliders, though, which are dirigible ("steerable") even though not powered. The Concise Oxford dictionary defines aeroplane as a powered aircraft but the full Oxford is more accommodating,


 * " Now chiefly Brit. An aircraft which relies on aerodynamic lift for flight; a heavier-than-air aircraft; esp. one having fixed wings and using propellers or jet engines to provide thrust. Cf. airplane n. 2b, plane n.5, aircraft n.In the period to 1900 when aircraft were still rudimentary in design and the word was still active in sense 1  the denotation is sometimes not clearly either ‘a surface’ or ‘an aircraft’, but something between the two concepts (see quots. 1868, 18942, 1896). For a full discussion of the development of the term in this period see S. Stubelius Airship, Aeroplane, Aircraft (1958   ) 251ff.


 * The equivalent term in North America is airplane."


 * not excluding gliders.


 * Flying machines is knowingly used as a near archaism in the title, which is fine but we should use it in its early 20th century, contemporary sense. There is also a strong historical argument for including gliders, which in those days were aeronautical test rigs, not sports machines, and were crucial to the development of the powered aircraft.  It's impossible to image the Wrights developing the Flyer without their painstaking testing, perhaps particularly of control systems, on a series of gliders.  Lilienthal's work was also an essential step to understanding flying, not least to the Wrights. I looked briefly to find examples of the Wrights' words and here is a fragment from an October 1902 letter from Orville to sister Katherine about the glider of that year:


 * "The largest machine that we handled in any kind [of weather] made the longest glide ..." my italics, Cheers, TSRL (talk) 20:00, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * It seems, then, that the Wrights and their father figure Chanute used "machine" in different ways. That leads to a 1-1 draw by my contemporary criterion for glider inclusion.  Stepping back a little from the title and exact definitions, I still think a reasonable account of early heavier than air craft should include gliders, as Gibbs-Smith did in his book cited in the previous article, to make sense of what happened.  BTW, what term did Chanute use to describe his own gliders?  Cheers, TSRL (talk) 21:13, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I certainly won't argue with OED, but the word "machine" seems to have been universally applied to gliders in the decades up to and including the Wright years. I don't think period accounts used the word "machine" as much, if at all, to refer to ballons/dirigibles. I think "machine" is used in this article's title as a default in the absence of any other obvious term that includes every human-made device that flies. The technically correct term for a lighter than air flying apparatus is, as many know, "aerostat." I think there may not be any absolutely definitive reference that tells us what to do. As editors, I think we have the discretion to simply decide if we want "machines" of this title to exclude aerostats. If so, the article introducion can give that explanation and point readers to another (presumed) article which covers "Early Aerostats" (or maybe, "Early Balloons and Dirigibles"). Or, we can simply decide that it's ok to put everything under the "machine" umbrella. DonFB (talk) 22:53, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Agree; that makes good sense. So how about a heavier than air/ lighter than air split, with powered aircraft and gliders in one and aerostats and dirigibles in the other? Historically, they were two separate lines which rarely crossed. We can fret about choices of titles later, choosing appropriate ones after we've decided how we want to make any split, if we do, rather than binding ourselves from the start with a title we have to fit within. One title could still be Early flying machines if we want, with an introductory explanation of our interpretation/use of it as DonFB suggests.TSRL (talk) 09:00, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Important books on flying machines by Chanute and Gibbs=Smith have been referenced in these discussions. Someone wrote above that Chanute excluded dirigibles. Did Gibbs-Smith include them or exclude them? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:34, 25 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The Gibbs-Smith book does not include any dirigibles.TSRL (talk) 10:58, 25 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. There seems some consensus emerging for definition as a heavier-than-air craft, and that discussing powered types in the present article without including gliders would be unhelpful. We can let aerostats look after themselves as far as this article is concerned. Anybody disagree strongly? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 14:09, 25 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I think gliders are important only in the progression toward powered flight. The early pioneers researched and developed their ideas using gliders. Binksternet (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Strong 'vote' to include gliders. Hard to imagine an article under this title not including Lilienthal's machines, those of Chanute and his group, and the Wrights (Montgomery and Pilcher while I'm at it). DonFB (talk) 04:01, 26 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Some important early lighter-than-air craft had engines. The term "machine" has evolved since it was first used here; it was used to mean much the same as "invention".  The intent of the article is to show all the various claims to "flight", including tying a couple of sheets to some sticks and jumping off of a cliff.  (And, technically, even sticks are simple "machines" -- the lever.)  If some have trouble with the title fitting the article, then maybe the title should change.  But "flying machine" is the common name.  --A D Monroe III (talk) 14:50, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

That seems less conclusive now, though gliders are definitely in. I guess the default is to stick with what we have - balloons, gliders, kites, birdmen and all, and a title that might or might not be appropriate unless and until we can think of a better one. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:53, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * As a PS to that, there is an | list of participants in the 1924 Wassercuppe glider contest headed Rhön machines.TSRL (talk) 22:10, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

List of literature
Does this list belong in the article, or would it more appropriatly form a separate article?TheLongTone (talk) 16:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I dont think it adds anything to this article, not sure it is notable enough to create a separate article either. MilborneOne (talk) 16:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * That the works are all redlinks is a bit of a giveaway for me. If important, they ought to have already been mentioned in the text anyway. GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:50, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think that arguement stands up. Both Cayley and Lillienthal's publications are obviously important, L'Empire de l'Air was an influence on the Wright brothers, and its dificult to dispute the importance of Chanute's attempt to gather together and publish a synopsis of what had been acheived in aeronautics in the late nineteenth century. Whether there is a worthwhile article to be written is another matter...I for one am not volunteering. I've far too many half-cooked articles on early French machines on the go for one thing.TheLongTone (talk) 18:07, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I see this list as I see the others - a resource to be worked into the main body of the text. I just split it off for now until someone could get around to that, and couldn't think of anywhere else to leave it. I can't see any sense in creating another article for it. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:16, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

This article is off the bottom of the Wikipedia standards chart
Here's an example:

"There are many stories of men strapping birdlike wings, stiffened cloaks or other devices to themselves and attempting to fly, typically by jumping off a tower. It can be difficult to sort fact from legend. During this early period the issues of lift, stability and control were not understood, and most attempts ended in serious injury or death. Designs often lacked an effective horizontal tail, or the wings were simply too small. Claims of successful flights shoauld be treated with caution."

Absolutely no consideration of encyclopaedic character has been paid- rather, the prose wallow in subjective qualifiers, and unsubstantiated supposition.

Are there "many stories"? The qualification is meaningless, unnecessary, informs not at all. How many must jump from a tower before the act is "typical"? Is it difficult to sort fact from legend? For who? Regardless of the truth of the observation, it adds nothing here. Tell what is known, make clear the sourcing or noteworthy lack of credible references, and leave it to the reader to assess. Do not attempt to read the mind or transpose what you figure must be true onto the subjects. Generalizations about what was or was not understood when little or no testament is available is supposition -at best. How many designs suffered for "lack of effective tail"? Be exact with citations- not conclusions that you feel "must be true". This is not a place for making an argument- or original research.Mavigogun (talk) 17:23, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * You should have seen the train wreck I found here when I started. I am sure my text can be improved significantly, much of it is just my braindump to give the article some shape in place of the copy-paste salad and fanboi trivia lists that was here before. I hope you will make some constructive improvements based on the referenced sources or on new ones, very glad to have you on board. But one note of caution, sources such as Wragg do make subjective generalisations of the type I am also guilty of, so not all of them in this article are bogus. If in doubt, please add citation needed tags and/or discuss here. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:10, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I hear that- all well intended... and well received. There is a clear pitfall innate to the inclusion of rumour and myth and no distinction between a fanciful flight across the Bosphorus, Icarus, the dreams of Leonardo, and documented practical implementation.   There is as much credibility and topical meaning in Apollo driving the Sun Chariot across the sky, or Muhammad ridding the Buraq to Heaven as there is to any story of man tying feather to body and flying.   Yet it is not our purpose to determine truth- only to report what has been reported.   Still, we are not tasked to include every rumour of flying conveyance, but rather only that which we might credibly reference.   The problem here is that the standard of credible reference is put aside when an appealing story that sounds believable confronts.   Did Abbas Ibn Firnas cover himself in feathers and fly?   Of course not- but my opinion doesn't matter... only credible references.   Name 5 people who saw him fly.   Name two who testified first hand.   Name one.   It is widely known that young George Washington admitted wielding an axe against a defenceless cherry tree to his father; many sources may be cited saying as much- but none of them are credible: the story was fabricated over a century after the death of that man.   Our job is to discriminate what to report- not determine truth, interpret; it is best to qualify questionable material that is still worthy of inclusion by making the nature of the sources (and lack there of) clear, rather than proclaiming the material unreliable, me thinks.Mavigogun (talk) 21:11, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I think the above comments are patronising in the extreme and show absolutely no understanding of the history of flight. There are many stories: and they are of importance if only to demonstrate the strength of the desire to fly. Most serious histories of flight, Gibbs Smith and Hallion for example, mention them. Certainly the claims are in some cases dubious, but in the case of, for example, Ibn Firmas and Celebi the probability is surely that something happened, even if considerably romanced by hindsight. It's important to mention the more prominent of these claims, because if they are not included and given their proper weight some chauvinist fanboy will come along and insert them, only asserting that they flew. Many are mentioned by reputable hhistorians...I not that Moillard, just removed (& unjustifiably so in my opinion), has a citte from a book by Tom Crouch. And I would agree that Steelpillow has done...and is continuing to do...an excellent job of bringing what was an apalling muddle under control. If you don't like the article, improve it, don't just whinge and pontificate.TheLongTone (talk) 22:35, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * This is not an article about demonstrating the strength of desire to fly- or any other argument (not that the chronicling the dream of flight isn't worthy- it just ain't this article); this article documents the first flying machines.  Influential culture- including myths and legends -may be worthy of inclusion if they are demonstrated by credible reference to have contributed to a flight that was documented; however, those myths must not be presented as historic events through inclusion on a list of credible reports.     "The probability is surely that something happened" is not our standard here- and that assessment of probability is testament to exactly why credible references are necessary ("surely with all those reports of reindeer aloft...").   Nor should we include unsubstantiated claims as a hedge against partisan advocates- that way leads to mediocrity.   My comments here are in direct response to a request for discussion about edits I made to the article- in other words, collaboration in pursuit of developing the article.   The accusation of critique without contribution by TheLongTone is baseless demagoguery.Mavigogun (talk) 06:29, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Pots, kettles and needlessly long words. If you loold at the recent edit history of the article you would see that it is being worked on activly at present.TheLongTone (talk) 09:07, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * "Early flying machines" is not synonymous with e.g. manned flight, so there should be no problem with mentioning flying models, gliders etc (although whether early gliders were 'machines'. i.e. "an apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task" is debatable). I can understand the point being made by Mavigogun as far as reliable sources are concerned, but can this not be resolved by pointing out in the text that early reports have been handed down by word of mouth or that any written records that do exist rely on 'hearsay'? IMHO TheLongTone is right: such legends and early stories belong in the article, simply to put the more recent and documented evidence in its historical context. Alternatively, why not merge this article with the History of aviation article, since that article includes most, if not all, of the material here. --TraceyR (talk) 11:20, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I do sympathise with Mavigogun, despite being the victim. This article is about real early flying machines not mythical ones. Many legends and myths of flying are notable as stories and myths, and IMHO deserve their own article elsewhere. Inevitably there are some borderline cases where a story appears technically feasible, for example a tower jumper plummeting sufficiently slowly to survive and at a shallow enough angle to land some distance from the start. But WP:VERIFY is ruthless - if we have no credible source we should not document it. OTOH if we have a valid source which swallows the claim, we must do that too, whatever the truth of it. And here I have some small issues with Maviogun's contributions - the reason I invited them to discuss some edits here. Firstly, in the case of the Celebi claim, I believe it should be deleted here. But as a politeness to allow time for improved citation I tagged it. That tagging has been removed in favour of an uncited (and possibly WP:OR?) claim that there is only one source. Maybe I should tag the uncited claim about the poorly-cited claim? [:wink:] Secondly, "Did Abbas Ibn Firnas (aka Armen Firman) cover himself in feathers and fly?" I don't care, I only care whether reputable sources think he did. If authors such as Wragg give him credence for at least trying, then so should we. Of course, as TheLongTone kindly points out in my support, this is a marathon cleanup. I have been staunching the lethal wounds as quickly and roughly as I can, it is not a pretty sight and much work remains. There is no real contention here, just quibbles over detail. It is really great to see you all weighing in. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:04, 11 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I appreciate the sentiment of TraceyR and Steelpillow- sounds... healthy.  As to the prospect of merging with History of aviation, I reckon the argument against is the broader inclusion by this article of pretty much any flying apparatus.   Regarding the Çelebi sourcing observation, while that summation of sourcing doesn't rise to OR- the phrasing surrounding it most definitely is synthesis, and is essentially argument.   I suggest retaining the reference summation without the commentary (and will make that change).


 * (As an aside: I have been pursuing the Çelebi story for some years now; it would be false to state with certainty that there is no other record of the reported flights -only that there are no publicised accounts (can't prove a negative).  Presuming the stories are true, then either flight might be documented in the Ottoman archives- especially as both conveyed titles and coin; however, the Kemalist Revolution has rendered old Ottoman Empire documents all but inaccessible.   There is some hope that the present administration's admiration for Ottoman glory might loosen the grip on the archive- but I wouldn't hold your breath.  Of course, that speculation IS the product of OR.)Mavigogun (talk) 16:44, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Too accepting of claims by Whitehead
Let's keep a skeptical eye on the text, please, maintaining an arm's length distance from the various disputed claims made by aviators. For instance, Vuia did not really fly—he made short, powered hops. Especially problematic is the acceptance of one source, the editor of Jane's, in bringing Gustave Whitehead up to the level of the Wrights. The editor is respected, certainly, but he is a lone voice. Mainstream thought continues to be that Whitehead did not make the flights he and others claimed he made. Binksternet (talk) 20:09, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The bit about Vuia is on the way out (read the caveat just above the list) - you should have seen the clutter of fanboy claims when I started in on this article! But the evidence for Whitehead's claim is supported by more than just Jane's editorial, and subsequent references refuting the evidence have to date been thin on the ground. Given also the allegations that the Smithsonian received a large sum of money for housing the Flyer and promoting the Wrights' claim, one must be careful that anybody associated with the Smithsonian might be regarded as a PoV source, and that surely includes Gibbs-Smith whom you have used as a reference in your recent edits. So - where is this recent and demonstrably unbiased "mainstream" refutation of Whitehead's claims? If it is "mainstream" then you should have no trouble finding rock-solid independent references subsequent to Jane's editorial. Meanwhile much of your PoV about this controversy remains as unreferenced, or at best unreliably referenced, as the material you criticise. You have also removed some perfectly good material about aero engines, and maybe some other stuff, which I have not yet got around to referencing, a simple fact tag would have been sufficient, I shall now have to recover that. In fact, I am tempted to revert your whole sequence of edits so that we may pick out the good bits once we have discussed them and I will not have to rewrite the good stuff you removed. Having said all that I do take your point that one must be careful not to overstate Whitehead's case, and I will also try to better reference what is worth keeping. Right now I have to quit for the night, but tomorrow I may make you as unhappy as you just made me. My apologies in advance, that's Wikipedia for you, as long as we both remain impartial we should get there. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 22:30, 19 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry I made you unhappy. My point is to keep a lid on the status of Whitehead until more sources than Jane's have weighed in, that is, until the aviation mainstream agrees that the Wrights were not first. I don't want to misrepresent Whitehead in this article as compared to his biography article.
 * I jumped into the fray at the Whitehead biography in September 2010 because for other reasons I had been reading books by British historian Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith, and I noticed he had quite a lot to say about the little-known Whitehead. Gibbs-Smith was very dismissive. Per WP:No original research, a handful of us at the article were trying to keep it from becoming an argument for Whitehead, which was the preference of one or two Whitehead fans.
 * To get current, you might want to read some of the incredibly long talk page entries at Talk:Gustave Whitehead, especially the archives. There are also highly charged noticeboard discussions about the issue: here, here, here and here.
 * To sum up, I have been working for three years on the Whitehead biography so I'm familiar with the sources and status. Binksternet (talk) 03:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Couple of points. Firstly there is no substantial new evidence that Whitehead acheived anything of note. Secondly most mainstream historians have little to say about whitehead because his claims are so absurd. And thirdly as I understand it the Smithsonian did not receive large sums of money. What they got was the right to display the Wright Flyer. In all the unseemly brouhaha that has evolved over this it seems to be largely forgotten that this was to counter the Smithsonians claims for Langley, rather than an attempt to supress Whitehead's claims.TheLongTone (talk) 07:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * If the Smithsonian is "a PoV source," so is Jane's. The opposing bias of each source does not disqualify them; Wikipedia rules explicitly state that reliable sources which express bias can be some of the best sources when summarizing conflicting opinions on controversial subjects. I'd be interested, though, in knowing what source claims the Smithsonian received a large sum of money for housing the Wright Flyer; this is the first time I've heard that assertion. Perhaps the claim is simply a distorted interpretation of the fact that credentialed Smithsonian historians like Crouch and Jakab write books about the Wrights that earn revenue. If a reliable source actually claims that some person or group delivered bags of money to the Smithsonian to house the Flyer, that would be quite relevant, though not necessarily in this particular article. If, however, the claim is not from a reliable source, then it's not very useful in either the discussion or editing of this article. DonFB (talk) 07:48, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * My main source is: Weissenborn, G.K.; "Did Whitehead fly?", Air Enthusiast 35 (1988), pp.19-21 and 74-77. I quote;


 * Note that "shall publish or permit to be displayed" - i.e. not on the plaque, and not anywhere else either, not in a book, nothing.
 * So far as I am concerned, Weissenborn is as respectable a source as any other, and WP:VERIFY dictates that we discard our personal view of the truth in its favour.
 * The cash allegation is one I have only seen on unverifiable sources on the Internet: it is that at the time the Flyer was in England, and it was agreed that the Wrights (or their estate?) would ship it back to the States and pay the Smithsonian a large sum (I forget the alleged amount) for its upkeep and display. While those Internet sources are clearly inadequate for Wikipedia content, it is my understanding that, together with the above quotation, they may be taken as evidence that the Smithsonian is not a trustworthy and independent source in this matter and WP:VERIFY likewise requires that we discard it in favour of more acceptable sources.
 * This quotation, along with other material in the article, also answers the "nobody ever credited Whitehead before" argument. As for the "no new evidence" claim, here is Weissenborn's footnote (his italics):


 * If all the material referenced in that is not new evidence, I should like to know what is.
 * Yes, Jane's is the first and so far only major voice to speak out in favour of Whitehead, but we must respect their intelligence - that support cannot have been given lightly and they must have thoroughly digested the evidence - new and old - before reaching their conclusion. Someone claimed above that If the Smithsonian is "a PoV source," so is Jane's. Yet there is no evidence of Jane's benefiting from any kind of deal here, so I find that claim hard to take seriously.
 * In short, whatever we want to believe about the evidence, and whatever the established authorities want us to believe, "verifiability not truth" trumps them both. Too many discussions on our talk pages have descended to the first of these approaches and not focused on the last. If one is ignorant of the Whitehead literature one is unwise to speak out against it, and likewise for the Wrights. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Update: I have reverted to a previous version and then tried to set the controversy in its proper perspective. If anybody wants to make any more significant changes, I'd be grateful if you could discuss them here first as I am still working on the cruder flaws in this article and this one detail is a big distraction from that. (I wouldn't bother about the List of Achievements if I were you, I am currently dismantling it.) &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If you were really working on the cruder flaws then you would not have reworked the Whitehead material by yourself in the face of opposition from me, DonFB and TheLongTone. You write that Jane's is "authoritative", which it is, but it is not the final arbiter. The Smithsonian is also authoritative but you push their importance down too low in your wording. You also lean too much on the affidavits of eyewitnesses when there were just as powerful affidavits saying Whitehead did not fly, ever. You are cherry-picking your sources to favor Whitehead. Binksternet (talk) 14:19, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Surely Jane's is authoritative as a source for contemporary aviation matters. The opinion of its editor on historical matters bears no particular weight.TheLongTone (talk) 15:12, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * @Binksternet: Your snarky remarks aside, perhaps you have missed that my edits were not promoting Whitehead over the Wrights, merely recording the well-documented claim which has been put forward. Nowhere did I give Whitehead primacy over the Wrights or Jane's over the Smithsonian. And please don't revert again - WP:BRD says you are bold, I revert, we discuss. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:17, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Another point I would like to reiterate is that I am doing my best to make my edits and comments evidence-based. I would appreciate the same courtesy. For a start, we need to agree whether we can accept the Smithsonian and Gibbs-Smith as reliable sources for this specific issue. My own view is that WP:NOTRELIABLE is crystal clear - we cannot, given that they appear to have such a clear conflict of interest on this issue. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Regarding BRD, I am looking at the article from August 2013 just before you started merging content from the history of aviation article. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Early_flying_machines&diff=582557486&oldid=569154548 It says about Whitehead] that the guy "allegedly flew a steam-powered monoplane" in 1899. It says Gibbs-Smith dismisses this. It says Whitehead made a "reported flight" in 1901, which was dismissed by the Smithsonian and by Gibbs-Smith, but that in 2013 Jane's said this was a good claim. Your version placed the Wright brothers and Whitehead as equals regarding who was first in powered, controlled flight. Your version of his 1899 claim is presented as true on its face because of one witness. You wrote about the 1901 reported flight that there was a dispute about it but that "authoritative" Jane's says it was true. You also change the Wrights from being widely understood to be first to this apologetic version which assumes WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV is required: "According to the Smithsonian Institution and Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the Wrights made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight..." You also describe the Wrights engine in belittling terms when it was quite enough for the job.
 * Thus I see the BRD question in terms of before the merge work and after the merge work. I think the Whitehead and Wright bros material was a suitable summary of the mainstream aviation literature before you started the merge. Afterward not so much. You were bold, I reverted, now we discuss. Binksternet (talk) 21:42, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I can understand your concern here. Which of that material was there already, which which was my copy-paste from elsewhere to staunch a gaping wound and which my own original content is not really important to you, you just think it shows excessive PoV. But in terms of this article's history it is all in the past, I did a load of stuff since then and some other editors chipped in too. Undoing the whole lot on the grounds of BRD is obviously not sensible, we have to draw the line somewhere. The start of our unfortunate spat seems the best place to me, but if you think it better to move the page forward to include your first bunch of edits while we discuss things, I will not now contest it - BRD is a recipe for peacemaking not warring. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:51, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Moved from conflict of interest discussion
[Update] One other point about my position. Assuming we did come to agree that the Smithsonian has a conflict of interest, that does not stop us posting and referencing their claims, it just stops us presenting them as factual records as opposed to mere claims. Nor does it stop us presenting those claims as fact should a reliable 3rd party reference be available. So I am not seeking a hatchet job by the back door, merely a certain balance of presentation - much as you guys are seeking for the Whitehead claims. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:34, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * What about WP:UNDUE "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means that articles should not give minority views as much of, or as detailed, a description as more widely held views" that and other elements in policy suggest that while including a sentence at the start of the section to the effect that there is controversy, it should be borne in mind that the predominant viewpoint is Wrights first. Does that have a bearing? GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I reckon so,GraemeLeggett.  Implicit in Steelpillow's argument is that the majority view is only significantly voiced by the Smithsonian, and that crediting that view as a substantiated claim is unwarranted by credible references if they be conflicted- to which I ask is it the case?  Surely there are credible aviation historians outside of the Smithsonian that have a word to lend on this matter- and other institutions, such as the aforementioned FAI.   Further, rather than relying on guess work and suspicion to judge the credibility of Smithsonian sources, what has been published on that topic?   Where are the condemnations from a decisive segment of authoritative aviation historians?


 * 'No one understands me or the issue'- is that really how you wanna play this, Steelpillow?  You have made your reasoning clear enough- everybody just doesn't ascribe the same level of significance.   Keep in mind that your arguments haven't been made as an abstract- but in support of a contention.   This isn't just about scrying the motive of agents of the Smithsonian, is it?Mavigogun (talk) 14:12, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * @Mavigogun. Nice try: misrepresent me, accuse me of lacking good faith, blah, blah. What part of my above comment justifies your criticisms? Or are you accusing me of lying? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * @GraemeLeggett, yes that's pretty much spot on, and I'm sure the others agree. They just seem determined to believe that I don't, no matter how many times I write that I do. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding sources other than the Smithsonian or Gibbs-Smith, it is difficult to find any mentions at all in mainstream books on the history of aviation. I haven't the book to hand, but I'm sure that Richard Hallion, for example, either fails to mention him or relegates him to a brief footnote. That's how truly marginal Whitehead is. Really the most interesting thing about the affair is why people have a need to create such a hollow controversy. And a bit of googling found this, which seems to state a mainstream position, as of October 2013.TheLongTone (talk) 14:42, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Hitting the 'return' link at the foot of the above link reveals a great deal more rebuttal of the position of Jan's, including this somewhat catty contribution from the Huffington Post.TheLongTone (talk) 15:16, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Steelpillow wrote "@Mavigogun. Nice try: misrepresent me, accuse me of lacking good faith, blah, blah. What part of my above comment justifies your criticisms? Or are you accusing me of lying?"


 * You, Steelpillow, have not been accused of lying.  You have not been accused of lacking good faith; advocacy is often unintended- and errors of judgement do no necessitate a lack of good faith effort.   You were asked directly to substantiate your contention that Smithsonian agents' actions were motived by a conflict of interest, by citing references to the opinion of credible sources that alleged as much - not just a context in which it was possible.   You were also asked if the Smithsonian take on powered flight primacy was the foundation for contemporary consensus.  Why?   Because if it is not the singular basis, then the question of conflicting interest need not be resolved.   You have not been misrepresented- rather, you were offered a forthright reflection of the impression you made.   It was not my intent to victimise you.Mavigogun (talk) 23:20, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for assuming my good faith. I hope you will forgive me if I am troubled as to how that squares with your previous comments. I wrote "Nor does it stop us presenting those claims as fact should a reliable 3rd party reference be available." and you responded, "Implicit in Steelpillow's argument is that the majority view is only significantly voiced by the Smithsonian". I wrote, "So I am not seeking a hatchet job by the back door" and you responded, "This isn't just about scrying the motive of agents of the Smithsonian, is it?" You now follow up with the disclaimer, "You have not been accused of lacking good faith" and "It was not my intent to victimise you". Sure, you don't openly accuse but you lay the implication on thick and that is sometimes seen as victimisation. But perhaps I too should continue to assume good faith: are you simply not reading what I write? Or maybe "Mavigogun doesn't understand me" would be a more accurate view of your reply? Meanwhile you also continue to misunderstand the reason for establishing a potential conflict of interest - it is not about the content, not even about the claim, it is about the particular source used for referencing that claim as fact: there are, as we all happily agree, plenty of non-conflicted sources so this has no effect on the content of the present article, but only on our choice of references. But again, I am nervous whether you can bring yourself to accept my reassurance at face value? The matter of the CoI is under discussion in the topic below here. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:42, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * No need to thank me- the presumption should be expected. My critique does not reflect on the sincerity of your motive.   The focus and outsized import given to a reference that you deem extraneous to the content of the article is inexplicable; the contest fought over it then seems more a struggle of ego than a service to the development of content.   While that contest was waged in the context of a competing primacy claim, the question of your motive is of no consequence- so let us dispense with it all together.  Mavigogun (talk) 17:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Well then, let me thank you for your latest comment. I have been trying to get that message across for rather a long time. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Applicability of Wikipedia policy on reliable sources
The Smithsonian and Gibbs-Smith are indeed reliable sources. It's certainly not feasible to selectively decide they're reliable for one subject, but not for another.
 * Not so. It is perfectly normal for someone to be reliable on one issue but not on another. For example here in the UK I am a Parish Councillor. On most local issues I am deemed reliable and I discuss and vote on the business of the day. But on certain issues which might affect me personally I am deemed to have a conflict of interest and I must retire from the meeting while the discussion and vote take place. This is a very normal state of affairs and IMHO it absolutely applies to the Smithsonian and Gibbs-Smith. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

On the question of WP:NOTRELIABLE, Wikipedia says:
 * "Questionable sources are those that have a poor reputation for checking the facts, lack meaningful editorial oversight, or have an apparent conflict of interest.[8] Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely considered by other sources to be extremist or promotional, or that rely heavily on unsubstantiated gossip, rumor or personal opinion."

That's hardly the case for the Smithsonian or Gibbs-Smith.


 * OK, so let's look at that [8] explaining conflict of interest in a little more detail:


 * I would suggest that is a little closer to the bone. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Here's some further clarifying information:

Jane's endorsement of Whitehead is based on the John Brown website, which contains voluminous information about Whitehead and early aviation, but in my opinion, contains no new evidence in favor of Whitehead's flights. Any opinion to the contrary stated in this discussion is just that: an opinion. The only thing in Brown's site that might be considered "new" is his highly speculative analysis of a greatly enlarged vintage photo of a photo, in which Brown claims to see the Number 21 flying. Other matters, discussed above, regarding the Smithsonian-Wright "contract" and the Randolph, O'Dwyer and Weissenborn research is well-worn information which has been available for decades--there's nothing "new" in any of it. The statement, above: "they may be taken as evidence that the Smithsonian is not a trustworthy and independent source" is an opinion by a Wikipedia editor, not a consensus finding by reliable sources which could be included in this article. Another statement: "there is no evidence of Jane's benefiting from any kind of deal here" suggests that the Smithsonian is benefitting from a "deal." Whitehead researchers and partisans certainly do believe the Smithsonian improperly made an agreement with the Wright estate to uphold the Flyer's primacy in flight. Those opinions can be cited--and are, in the Whitehead and History by Contract articles--but that level of detail doesn't really belong in this article. DonFB (talk) 18:59, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There is a significant distinction between the standards of evidence needed for Wikipedia content and the standards needed to establish a conflict of interest. Content must be traceable to a reliable source. A conflict of interest only requires demonstration that there is a good case to be made - as that [8] says, "a conflict of interest implies only the potential for bias, not a likelihood". You might like to re-read my comments with this in mind. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The Smithsonian, of course, (and Gibbs-Smith) continue to be respected and reliable sources of aviation history research for the academic community. They did not recuse themselves, to use your flawed example as a Councillor. Their stated conclusions about the Wrights/Whitehead are a matter of record and can certainly be included. I will not revert if you choose to include citations by Whitehead researchers (most likely O'Dwyer or Weissenborn) who question or challenge their objectivity. But I believe such detail more properly belongs in articles devoted to Whitehead and the "Contract." DonFB (talk) 20:52, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * British polymath aviation historian Gibbs-Smith started writing about Whitehead in 1959, as far as I can tell, and continued to do so off and on for the next two decades, mentioning him in several of his books. It was only in 1978 that he became associated with the Smithsonian, by way of being selected as the first Lindbergh Chair prize winner. All of Gibbs-Smith's books were published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, not the Smithsonian. (Gibbs-Smith died and his Lindbergh Chair work was not published, though Tom Crouch cites it as "The Flight Claims of Gustave Whitehead", unpublished manuscript, in his books A Dream of Wings and The Bishop's Boys.) Even if we assume the Smithsonian is conflicted (a position I do not hold), I don't see how anyone can conclude that Gibbs-Smith had a conflict of interest before 1978. Binksternet (talk) 17:18, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

DonFB and Binksternet assessments reflects my own. While Steelpillow's assertion that "I am doing my best to make my edits and comments evidence-based" is undoubtedly true, that "best" does not always rise to "good enough"- and is why consensus plays a critical role. It is natural to seek truth when crafting a document, to adjudicate- when our job is to accurately reflect. However, here we have what seems to me plainly synthesis: "while those Internet sources are clearly inadequate for Wikipedia content, it is my understanding that, together with the above quotation, they may be taken as evidence that the Smithsonian is not a trustworthy"; a dubious interpretation of import was combined with material admittedly failing standards in order to proclaim "evidence". I view the entire argument tainted with position advocacy; Steelpillow, take a step back and lend a critical eye not to the strength of your argument, but to its very nature.Mavigogun (talk) 05:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, I will reiterate a point I made above: the standards for establishing verifiable content and the standards for establishing a conflict of interest (real or potential) are very different. All of you appear to be confusing the two. And you all seem to be unshakeably convinced I am bashing a PoV about the truth. I am not - truly it is you who need to "step back" and rethink your understanding of the issue here. I am bashing the applicability of WP:NOTRELIABLE policy to cases such as this one. Can we have a little less of the unsupported "your analogy is flawed" rhetoric and a little more focus on our black-and-white policy statements? In what way does that note [8] not apply to the Smithsonian? For your convenience I repeat here that this Wikipedia policy states, "Sources that may have interests other than professional considerations in the matter being reported are considered to be conflicted sources." Are you arguing that the contract with the Wrights' estate does not represent an "interest other than professional" with respect to this issue? How so? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:12, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * One point I will withdraw from this discussion, at least for now. The allegation that the Smithsonian received money from the Wrights' estate is one that I can not now track down. Maybe it has disappeared from the Internet, maybe I cannot recall the appropriate search string, maybe my memory is playing tricks. Whatever, please discount my remarks to that effect and regard it as false. However that does not change my view that the contract with the Wrights' estate is sufficient to demonstrate a CoI. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:12, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I will stipulate that the "contract" appears to put the Smithsonian in a conflict of interest. That, however, is a much less sweeping statement than yours that there is "evidence that the Smithsonian is not a trustworthy and independent source." Some of that so-called "evidence" was your now-disclaimed repetition of unsourced allegations of "payment" to the Smithsonian by unnamed, shadowy sources for the housing of the Flyer. (Presumably, you're aware that the Smithsonian paid $1 to the Estate for the Flyer.) We are left with sourced accusations by independent Whitehead researchers who directly impugn the objectivity of the Smithsonian. As far as I know, no authoritative academic or historical organization has done so. As Wikipedia editors, we certainly cannot include in the article our own editorial opinion (if such a consensus existed) about a possible conflict of interest in this particular case. As I mentioned, cited challenges are already included in Wikipedia, but this article does not seem like the appropriate place to repeat them. DonFB (talk) 19:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * HI, DonFB. Thank you for that first sentence. That is all this section is addressing. The rest is off topic. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:35, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * On the contrary, the topic is whether the Smithsonian can be cited as a reference. Of course, it can. I recognize that the Smithsonian remains a reliable source within Wikipedia's definition, even if it holds a bias, as Jane's does. Your goal appears to be to exclude the Smithsonian as a reference, as seen in your comment earlier: "While those Internet sources are clearly inadequate for Wikipedia content, it is my understanding that, together with the above quotation, they may be taken as evidence that the Smithsonian is not a trustworthy and independent source in this matter and WP:VERIFY likewise requires that we discard it in favour of more acceptable sources." (My italics.) DonFB (talk) 21:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * The balance of DonFB's offering above speaks directly to the question- the "off topic" qualification and dismissal is ill conceived, Steelpillow.  What was the purpose of your quip?   What outcome do you wish from it?Mavigogun (talk) 11:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Not to this topic it doesn't. This topic is about a very narrow issue of no relevance to the content of this article, but only to the references we choose to support it (and there are plenty to choose from, nobody is denying that). My purpose and desired outcome? I am trying to distance the different issues so these discussions don't get so muddled between them. The topic above is more relevant to the content. I can respond in detail to DonFB's comments if you both so desire, but I do not believe this discussion is the place to do so. Further, given that I agree with much of it bar a few well-worn niggles, I doubt the value of continuing it elsewhere. I hope that answers your concerns? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * While I am here, you earlier asked, "what has been published on that topic?", so here is a link to a PDF statement by The Smithsoinan's Tom Crouch in which he concludes, "I can only hope that should persuasive evidence for a prior flight be presented, my colleagues and I would have the courage and the honesty to admit the new evidence and risk the loss of the Wright Flyer." The question is, until its publication did he and his colleagues live up to the standards he now expresses? Given the Smithsonian's turbulent past and the statement's final appearance as late as March this year, one must wonder, and that is what conflict of interest is all about - that nagging likelihood. In England, we have a solid legal position that is summed up as, "what would the average intelligent and informed person on the Clapham [London] omnibus think?" And that is as certain (or as woolly) as conflict of interest decisions must be. Here is a page containing a copy of that contract with the Wrights' estate which you may compare at your leisure with WP:NOTRELIABLE and paying special attention to the Contract Paragraph 2, sub-paragraphs (c) and (d), and our policy Note [8]. I would appreciate your comments. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Great read- I'm enrapt, thanks.  It will take some time to digest.Mavigogun (talk) 19:53, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I am in favor of the changes made to highlight the controversy between Whitehead and Wrights. Jane's is a RS, and so is the Smithsonian.  Neither "trumps" the other.  So we must include them both, noting they conflict.  If you disagree with some of the wording used, that's a different matter. --A D Monroe III (talk) 17:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not as simple as Jane's vs the Smithsonian. A great deal of mainstream literature unrelated to the Smithsonian credits the Wrights, and a great deal more does not mention Whitehead or the controversy. More importantly, the Smithsonian is an organization whose mission is to investigate and report history, while Jane's is expert in the current state of aviation affairs. There is not a 1:1 relationship here—Jane's does not deserve equal footing. Binksternet (talk) 17:21, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree it's not 1:1, but it's not N:1 either. We're not counting votes with sources.  Readers of Wikipedia may also read Jane's, and rightfully wonder what's going on.  We must inform them.  It's good if we also add "though most sources say...", but leaving Jane's out completely says "all sources say...", which isn't right.  --A D Monroe III (talk) 18:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I would not favor excluding Jane's as a reference (I don't know that anyone has even made such a suggestion), but Binksternet's point is well made: the vast amount of published material by reliable mainstream sources credits the WB, while only one reliable mainstream source credits Whitehead. The article should reflect that reality, rather than as it now appears, placing the Wrights and Whitehead on equal footing as contenders for a title. DonFB (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, so we agree both are RS and belong in the article. Then we're just left with how they are represented.  Even then, rather than our opinions, we really need some RS for that decision as well.  Do we have one or more sources that say how those should be relatively judged?  If not, all we can really do is list both, although we can certainly add things like "most sources say…", if a large majority favor one claim over the other.  What proposals (besides reverts) are there to find something we can agree on?  Can we get to specific verbiage?  --A D Monroe III (talk) 21:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)


 * An edit I made today and an edit a few days ago that removed an inappropriate equivalency between the WB and GW have addressed my most serious concerns. If explanatory language is used, I would support something like, "Most aviation historians and academic researchers credit the Wright brothers as first to make....." I, too, thank Steelpillow for his exceptional labors on this article; it's no longer the embarrassment that it was. DonFB (talk) 23:44, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

We are making small progress now. Some of you are at last considering the applicability of our policy to the Smithsonian contract. But I remain puzzled by some aspects of this. @DonFB, you wrote above that "[steelpillow's] goal appears to be to exclude the Smithsonian as a reference, as seen in your comment earlier: "While those Internet sources are clearly inadequate for Wikipedia content, it is my understanding that, together with the above quotation, they may be taken as evidence that the Smithsonian is not a trustworthy and independent source in this matter and WP:VERIFY likewise requires that we discard it in favour of more acceptable sources." (My italics.)" You are almost there, but that "I don't trust him" innuendo still lurks. My goal is to apply WP:NOTRELIABLE correctly to this situation. I see the exclusion of the Smithsonian for referencing certain specific assertions as a consequence of that goal. You and others disagree. But what puzzles me is why you disagree. You have also said, "I recognize that the Smithsonian remains a reliable source within Wikipedia's definition, even if it holds a bias, as Jane's does." I have two issues with this. The first is, you don't examine our policy's approach to that bias and where it might affect our referencing. The second is, what bias does Jane's have? Is it a coincidence that American editors are supporting their own and accusing a British publisher of bias, even to making personal attacks on its editor as someone did earlier? OTOH I, a British Wikipedian, am defending Jane's and putting the Smithsonian under the spotlight. That is why it is so important for these discussions to be evidence-based. I have produced evidence on the Smithsonian, not only to support the establishment of a conflict of interest but also the Smithsonian's own apologia on the matter. Those assertions of bias and incompetence on the part of Jane's - where is the supporting evidence for that? If there is none, then we don't need to bring it up in this topic. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:50, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * As an organization, the Smithsonian is a reliable source. I am not aware of a Wikipedia policy that condones the selective exclusion of such a source's statements. Jane's, through the voice of its editor, has decided to give credit to Whitehead. The statement is not based on new factual original research by the publication, but simply on Jackson's decision to agree with the case presented by a third-party website (whose "evidence" is regarded as new or valid only by Jackson and establshed GW promoters, but not by academic historians--at least, none who have spoken up so far). DonFB (talk) 23:27, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
 * You repeat yourself. Your points have already been addressed, in part below here. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * You fail to address my point that Wikipedia rules do not contemplate its editors selectively excluding content published by a reliable source. The conflict of interest provision is intended to characterize a source that is entirely unreliable, none of whose statements can be used, except in a self-description.
 * Here, I will repeat myself: articles can include statements by other reliable sources that challenge the position of a given source. Such challenges, in fact, exist in other articles on this topic. I don't think this article is the place to rehash that controversy. DonFB (talk) 20:04, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry just a question is the Statement about Whitehead in Jackson's editorial or in the main body of Jane's ? MilborneOne (talk) 15:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The link in the Whitehead article web content preview is described as "executive overview". GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Editorial comment by Jackson is not the same as being in the main body of the book and is really his opinion and not that of the Janes. MilborneOne (talk) 17:03, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Amendment to my earlier comment a reproduction on John Brown's site (to which Jane's editor gives credit) gives it as the "Foreword" GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:15, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * @MilborneOne: If Jane's editor-in-chief is not their authoritative spokesperson on such matters, then who is? [Update] To put it another way, I have always been under the imporession that respected journals, such as say The Times, the Scientific American and Jane's All the World's Aircraft, were accustomed to publishing their positions on topical issues as editorial content. At least, so it has been for the last sixty years. When did this change? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Now broken out as a separate topic, see below. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I just re-read Tom Crouch's March 15 statement on behalf of the Smithsonian. He concludes, "I can only hope that, should persuasive evidence for a prior flight be presented, my colleagues and I would have the courage and the honesty to admit the new evidence and risk the loss of the Wright Flyer." A perfect textbook example of a conflict of interest. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Your interpretation of a Crouch statement does not make him have a conflict of interest.
 * You might want to check out this rebuttal of Brown's suspiciously blurry photo analysis. Carroll F. Gray wrote in the Huffington Post that the photo Brown was analyzing was most likely not the Whitehead aircraft but another view of the California, a Montgomery glider which was shown in San Jose, California, in 1905. Both Brown's and Gray's photo analysis are conjectural, but after studying them both, Gray's looks the most likely. Brown will have to keep looking for the notional Whitehead-in-flight shot. Binksternet (talk) 21:55, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Teaching the "first flight" controversy?
Before I get to this subject, I first want to say thanks to Steelpillow for taking so much time on this article. It might have been easier to delete the whole mess and start over, but he's done it in slow steps, allowing others to comment and participate, in the accepted Wikipedia way. But while this is in process, it's not very pretty.

So, why is this article such a wreck work-in-progress? It's kind of my fault.

This article is a merge of two previous messy articles – Early Flying Machines and First Flying Machine. The second one was my failed attempt to divert a lot of edit wars that were going on (and still go on). It seems a majority of the world's elementary schools teach who "invented flight" with broad, simplistic, yet conflicting claims, general all promoting local heroes. Later, those schoolchildren grow up, read Wikipedia, are outraged at the other simplistic claims, and start intense unending campaigns to "fix" all this.

Rather than repeat the claim war in each and every article about any early aviator, I thought it would be better to put it all on one – First Flying Machine; it would be like "put all your bad apples in one barrel" or something. Besides probably just being a bad idea to start with, my free time for Wikipedia was reduced, so I couldn't finish shepherding First Flying Machine to keep it as a place where all 'first' claims are stated distinctly, so they can be compared with NPOV. Instead, concentrating the edit warring without any moderation had predictable results.

I bring this up only to say that the original cause of this mess still needs to be addressed. People continue to promote various POV 'first' claims and try to remove all others, often well-armed with sources that back them up. I still think it would be good to have a place that says "there are controversies about who was first to fly", and just add links to that in each of the other early aviator articles. Since the merge, this is probably the best place to put it.

Any ideas? --A D Monroe III (talk) 19:28, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * First, many thanks for your kind words. And don't feel bad - I actually threw in some more wreckage myself before I began the tidy-up. As far as this article goes, I have come to see it as the first of a sequence of spin-offs from the History of aviation, each dealing with a major era. For the "who came first" issues there is a List of firsts in aviation, which as far as I am concerned is just fine - the present article does not have to be pedantic about documenting them all, we can just pick the ones with wider historical significance and place them in context. But I am afraid that the root problem you contemplate is next to impossible to fix. Some controversies - the current Wrights vs. Whitehead being a prime example - will just chase round every talk page for every article they ever appear in, carrying a baggage of bad vibes around with them. That's just a reflection of human nature. One can try to be impartial and rational and a good Wikipedian, and if others do the same then we are in with a chance. What you say about a place for summing up the controversy is just what I tried to do before being reverted for editing during a discussion. Not very encouraging, but I hope it helps. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:07, 20 November 2013 (UTC)


 * [Update] Specifically for the "who flew first" controversy I think there is a good case for an article focusing on the controversies themselves rather than the machines and flights, say Controversies over the first flying machine. As long as it takes the approach of documenting the appearance of claims and counter-claims rather than their validity, I think it should be practicable. The wars would only come where any statement of validity is given, whether for the claims or even merely for the sources of that statement (as in the discussion above here for example). There will always be fanboys making PoV edits but if the article policy is to not make judgements but only record their announcement, it might stand a chance. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:17, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * As noted above, this is how one of the articles merged into this one started: it was largely a very poorly written analysis of what constitutes a flight. This bit got blown away as unsourced opinion, although most of what it said was uncontentious & with a bit of digging could be sourced. The aim was to put the various claims into context, largely to elucidate the claims that Santos Dumont's 14bis was the first 'sucessful aeroplane.TheLongTone (talk) 14:47, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, please don't bother looking up old versions of First Flying Machine, except maybe to learn how not to do this.


 * The question remains, though. Do we want to prominently state "there is a controversy" and explain it?


 * Some reasons to do so:
 * Pro 1: It may help organize all the apparently endless "my hero was first" edit-warring into something constructive instead of destructive.
 * Pro 2: It's informative and encyclopedic.
 * Pro 3: It's interesting (at least to me).


 * Some reasons to not do so:
 * Con 1: It may just be more edit-war bait.
 * Con 2: It appears hard to balance the sources; most sources are as POV as the editors that reference them.
 * Con 3: It's more work, which the current active editors may not have time for.


 * If we decide we may want to do this, we can then tackle what article it goes in. --A D Monroe III (talk) 16:13, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * IMO the reasons to cover the controversy far outweigh the reasons not to mention it. Get the muck out in the open & deal with it.TheLongTone (talk) 17:06, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

If you are looking for a definition of what makes a sustained flying experiment successful, you should go find as many Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith books as possible in the most complete library at which you have access. I read several of his early aviation books at the engineering library of the University of California, Berkeley. Gibbs-Smith says that a distance of a quarter mile through the air (1,320 ft, 400 m) is needed before a flight can be considered sustained. He says with enough power applied, a barn door can be made to 'fly' for short distances, so he is dismissive of early experiments that involve smaller distances. His quarter mile benchmark puts the Wright brothers in a somewhat awkward position; their first flights did not cover a quarter mile on the ground, but more than a quarter mile of flowing air because they were flying into the wind. (The longest Wright flight on December 17, 1903, was about a half mile of air flow: 59 seconds of 31 mph air over a ground distance of 842 ft.) Gibbs-Smith explains this and grants the Wrights primacy. You can see an early form of this idea in his 1958 article "What is a Powered Flight?" which was published in Flight magazine. In that article he says Sir George Gardner, then-director of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, felt the same way about the quarter-mile rule of thumb. He does not mention Whitehead in this 1958 article but he talks about Mozhaiski, Maxim, Ader, Jatho, Cody, Roe, and Santos-Dumont. Gibbs-Smith also talks about two very different approaches to early flight: the groundsman who designs an inherently stable craft flyable by anyone, and the airman who designs a craft at the edge of instability—one that requires active participation by a skilled pilot. Though the groundsman approach eventually succeeded with powerful engines, the airman approach was necessary to achieve first flight with the limited resources of the day. There is much more material of this nature to be found in the Gibbs-Smith books at your library. Binksternet (talk) 18:01, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Resolving the controversy?
What will happen to the "first flight" controversy once books are published that show there was a powered controlled manned "flight" in an "airplane" or "flying machine" that was covered by 150 +/- newspapers from around the world in 1901?Tomticker5 (talk) 17:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

...all of them essentially rehashes of the same dubious article.TheLongTone (talk) 17:39, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Anyone who has read each and every one of the 150 +/- newspaper articles that covered the first flights made in Connecticut in 1901 would not be able to conclude; "all of them essentially rehashes of the same dubious article".Tomticker5 (talk) 01:14, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If not, then the other newspapers were fabricating details. Only one newspaper asserts that they had a reporter present. Binksternet (talk) 07:18, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

I respect all claims to 'first flight', even though they often conflict. It would be nice if history was always unambiguous, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Worse, there aren't two conflicting views here, but a dozen. It will never be resolved on this talk page, or any other. If it ever is resolved, it will be in comparison of the sourced claims highlighted in an article section focused on just this conflict. That's what we're currently discussing above. For any of you who think the conflict should be resolved quickly and simply in one particular way, I urge you to wait until that discussion is complete, and present your case in whatever venue is provided for this. But be aware that your views are up against many editors that are as adamantly convinced of their position as you are; you aren't going to change their minds by going at them one-on-one. ("If you argue with a dog, you'll end up barking.") Your hope lies in convincing the middle-ground editors through thoughtful consensus-building. That's how Wikipedia works, right? --A D Monroe III (talk) 17:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I was referring to what would happen when books are written and released showing research of the various newspaper articles that covered airplane flights in Connecticut in 1901. Today there are tools that weren't available to past aviation historians. Will Wikipedia allow these newly released books to be added as sources to the various articles on the history of flight/airplanes, etc.?Tomticker5 (talk) 19:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * If reliable sources were to say that they believed the flight happened in 1901 then that would get added to the articles. At the moment there are reliable sources that say the flight happened, but there are others that said that it didn't (or is doubtful) and for the moment those latter ones carry the weight of opinion. GraemeLeggett (talk) 20:54, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Reliability of editorial content
It has long been customary for any respected journal to publish its official views, on matters outside the main content, in the form of editorial comment. Several editors in the above discussions are claiming that this does not apply to Jane's All the World's Aircraft and we should discount its editorial comment, even when signed off by the Editor-in-Chief. I believe these wiki editors are misguided. Can we settle this here or do we need to move the discussion over to the village pump? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:15, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Jane's may be a reliable source for contemporary aviation matters but I fail to see how it's position on matters of aviation history bear weight that is comparible to that of the Smithsonian and a |considerable number of aviation historians. The editor of Jane's position is based on the beliefs of John Brown, the quality of whose website speaks for itself regarding his reliability and historical scrupulousness: Brown's major evidence is a forensic analsysis of a photo that he claims shows a photo on which the Bridgeport Herald illustration is based. This claim seems to have been |discredited by Tom Crouch. If anything, what this seems to do is to diminish the any claim of the editor of Jane's to be considered a reliable source.TheLongTone (talk) 12:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Please try to stay on topic. This topic is not about the Smithsonian, nor Brown, nor the content of Jane's foreword in their 2013 edition (copy here), nor even whether you regard Jane's as unreliable, but whether such a foreword may in general be taken as a statement of their position by a publication such as Jane's. Please could you explain why you discount this widely adopted convention, because I am beginning to smell more PoV-bashing every time you go off-topic again. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:24, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * All of the accounts of this issue describe Jane's editor Paul Jackson making the decision alone after interviewing John Brown in person. There is no description which includes calling together the editorial board of Jane's and putting the question to them. We are looking at an individual decision and an individual statement made in the Foreword to the book rather than in the text of the book. Thus the weight of Jane's is not fully behind Whitehead; it is only the personal respect that Jackson deserves as chief editor. Binksternet (talk) 16:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest you are wrong about the relationship between Jackson and Jane's. If Jackson's view differed from Jane's as an entity, one might expect such a foreword to carry a disclaimer. There is none such here. Also, such a piece is unlikely to have been published unilaterally, it is normal practice in any publishing office to pass one's work across other pairs of eyes, and if there were substantial dissent within the organization that would have had to be resolved before publication. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I understand some of the questions about Jane's Whitehead comments; I don't totally agree with it myself. But restating our opinions about it isn't going to change anything.  Jane's is an oft-used RS.  If this particular reference is an exception to being RS, we need a substantial weight of separate sources for that assertion.  A couple of contrary ones would still fall into the realm of being just controversial, not disallowed.  Without that substantial weight, I think we have to respect it still being used as a source, though should definitely note the disagreements when it's used.  --A D Monroe III (talk) 19:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Jackson's reliability
For a backlash story see AVWeb published 12 days after the Jane's foreword.

A major fault of the Jane's position is that Jackson never discusses the original reason for the Smithsonian contract—the Langley connection in which the Smithsonian, for many years, mistakenly or otherwise backed Langley as first to fly. Any account of the Smithsonian contract which does not discuss Langley is an incomplete version. Brown focuses wrongly on the contract as a tool to keep Whitehead down but it was really a tool to keep Langley supporters from popping back up. Binksternet (talk) 16:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Since you all want to discuss this, I have created a separate topic for it.
 * The significant part of your post is the link to AVWeb, for which I thank you. Besides recording somebody else's backlash (as journals do), it comments that, "Brown's evidence appeared to satisfy Jane's editor, Paul Jackson," without actually checking with Jackson. Let's have a look at what a couple more suitably reputable publications have to say after they had spoken to Jackson:
 * Time gives a reasonable cross-section of the debate. Among other things it quotes a suggestion by Crouch that Jackson was just using the story as a cheap trick to boost sales, followed by quoting Jackson's rebuttal. There is some useful material too in the subsequent public comments.
 * National Geographic explains how Jackson's view is not based on Brown alone but rather on a long-standing technical understanding. It further explains Jackson's view on the Brown photo-in-a-photo, which again is based on his experience in the publishing field and is understandable, even if it turns out ultimately to be misplaced.
 * Those two links are not selectively biased by the way, I just picked the illustrious sites returned in a search result. All in all, your critique of Jackson appears based on a shallow skim of the pertinent facts. It does not appear to be sensibly evidence-based. Sorry, but I don't buy it. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:41, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Really. Some kind of "long-standing technical understanding" caused Jackson in 2009 to praise the Wrights as first to fly? I don't see Jackson as having anything but a fairly short introduction of the subject by John Brown.
 * I notice you have not touched upon Langley, my key point. The National Geographic talks about that aspect, telling the true story of how Langley's friend tried to get him posthumous credit as first to fly. The contract was written much later to stop any further advocacy of that notion. Brown's case against the Smithsonian depends on the contract being about Whitehead and the Wrights. His case for Whitehead weakens if he cannot establish the Smithsonian as having a conflict of interest. His strategy is two-pronged: prove that Whitehead flew, for which he has a blurry photo enlargement, and prove that the Smithsonian is evil, for which he has the Langely-based contract, having no foundation related to Whitehead. Binksternet (talk) 20:08, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * That's the trouble with being in a hurry. I recalled a little more than was in the National Geographic piece, it discusses the engineering approach taken by Jackson but does not mention a longer-term interest by him. Did I pick that up from my imagination or another website? I should have learned from my cash-transaction debacle. My apologies for that slip. But it does not change the material thrust of my comment. I don't see the need to drag Langley into the specific issue as to whether Jackson is reliable, he is not Brown. There is a great danger in all these discussions of circular argument - the Wrights flew first therefore Whitehead's claims are false therefore Brown is a charlatan therefore Jackson has been bamboozled therefore Jackson is not trustworthy therefore Jane's is not trustworthy therefore the Smithsoinan is right which proves that the Wrights were first. One has to be careful to point the logic in the right direction. The accusation is that Jackson is unreliable therefore his view is suspect, whereas in fact the kneejerk response has been that Jackson's view is unpalatable therefore we must discredit him any way we can. I have dissected out the issues as those attempts have got wilder and wilder. Take a reality check boys, where has your consistently pro-Wright at all costs argument got you? Past Whitehead, past Brown, past mad assassination attempts on an unimpeachably respected publication because its Editor-in Chief published an editorial you don't like, and into mob-rule slinging mud at me (until I challenged that so it suddenly stopped. Got cold feet suddenly?). You swallow the Smithsonian's line and Crouch's unwarranted mud-slinging wholly unquestioningly, save only to deny that Crouch's admission of a chink in his armour - that conflict of interest - is in fact such an admission (though one of your fellow editors does accept even that statement), and you support it all with circular logic. Yes, that's why you all constantly introduce digressions, you have this need to keep pointing back into the circle. I break out these separate topics to help you see that, but you seem incorrigible, unable to wake up and think rationally. At least I admit my errors of fact or logic, but you of course have none. Oh, and no, I do not believe that Whitehead was assuredly ahead, but I do at least believe that there is a rational and honourable debate to be had. I am only sorry that you guys do not appear to feel the same way, the dishonourable mud-slinging of the pro-Wright lobby is shameful and makes it hard to remember that actually you have some good arguments somewhere among it all. Frankly, it has been disgustingly and blatantly PoV from the moment somebody disrupted my repair work on this article and started slinging mud at my own integrity. I am sick of the whole game. This series of debates is closed as far as I am concerned, feel free to rant back at your will, I will not be watching. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:32, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Re the recent rewrite
Fabulous, there is now a solid framework for a decent article. The content needs going through to remove some lumps and add decent references, but thats a relatively small matter. However, the article in my opinion does lack some mention of what was the raison d'etre of one of the articles that were merged to crate the horrible mess that User:Steelpillow has sorted out, namely some discussion about what makes a successful flight. I see this as heading the section on Langley, Whitehead & the Wrights, which I think should also include Santos-Dumont.TheLongTone (talk) 13:14, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Your proposed addition would be a good place for the Gibbs-Smith idea that a quarter mile traveled through the air constitutes a successful flight. Gibbs-Smith also had the idea that some early pioneers designed very stable aircraft, but others designed aircraft with relaxed stability which required dynamic pilot responses; this latter strategy was what made the Wrights succeed before everybody else. Responsive relaxed stability designs flown by skilled pilots were able to make best use of the wind currents. High stability aircraft designs needed higher powered engines to succeed, which they soon developed in time for the Great War. Binksternet (talk) 15:29, 2 January 2014 (UTC)


 * As you say, well covered by Gibbs-Smith, some available online via Flight. Additionally it's now possible to read early editions of l'Aerophile online via the bncf website. And there is probably something online in Flight coverage of the Gorrell report in the thirties.TheLongTone (talk) 17:00, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Aviation in the pioneer era
I've just created the above article, so the post-1910 stuff can be either deleted of copied across if necessary.TheLongTone (talk) 17:07, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
 * That's great, congratulations. I have been thinking for a while that this Early flying machines article covers too long a span to be coherent, so I'd like to see the material from 1904 onwards merged across and deleted from here. People will probably dicker and whinge about precise cutoff dates appropriate to each title, but IMHO the more encyclopedic view is to dicker and whinge about the article titles for each period (grin). &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:27, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Date Format
A recent edit changed the format of the dates in the section on Whitehead to American (mm d, y) format. Looking at the article I see that the is no existing consistency in date format... indeed at least one section contains both. Any strong feelings?? In any case, the article should be tidied up oone way or the other.TheLongTone (talk) 17:24, 27 January 2015 (UTC)


 * It looks like the dates have been changed to the non-american d-m-y format, in articles like this without a direct connection to any particular country then we should stick with whatever the first author used as a date format and they should then all be the same (no I havent actually looked at what that was yet). MilborneOne (talk) 19:15, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * It makes sense to normalise not just dates but spelling too. The oldest useful version in the history dates from 2010 and has both mixed dates and spellings. Since then the content of several other articles/lists has been merged in. I'd suggest that whoever gets in there and does a major job on sorting it out should get to make the call. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:44, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry. That was me who made the date format changes. While I was adding the "convert" template, I noticed the sections I was working on used both US and International dates. I decided to standardise them to the International format (i.e., the format used by ~95% of the world's population). I am fine with whichever format there is a consensus for use in this article . . . just so long as the entire article uses the same format. --Thorwald (talk) 04:35, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Then can I suggest that we regard as setting the precedent for the direction to normalise dates? I confess that I know little of spellings outside of the UK and USA, is there a similar international majorty standard spelling? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:36, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * On the subject of spelling, currently three 'centre' vs four 'center', neither 'cancelled' nor 'canceled', about equal 'metre' and 'meter', but 'aeroplane' is used in the lede. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:02, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I imagine much of the inconsistancy comes from the article being the result of a seies of merges. Is there a wikipedia equivalent of tossing a coin?TheLongTone (talk) 14:14, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's whatever the first editor to tackle the topic does. Since the first significant edit made a mess, I suggest we default to the first editor to start tackling the mess. That would appear to be Thorwald. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:21, 29 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Agree with Steelpillow. MilborneOne (talk) 19:57, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Pearse
While there is some debate that Richard Pearse made sustained controlled flight pre-1904, his semi-successful attempts at doing so are sufficiently notable to be included in this article. 202.154.149.112 (talk) 07:19, 8 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I came here to make the same point. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  11:31, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

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a notice
"The earliest report of an attempted jet flight dates back to the Ottoman Empire. In 1633, the aviator Lagâri Hasan Çelebi reportedly used a cone-shaped rocket to make the first attempt at a jet flight." it was a rocket flight and not a jet flight

Whitehead
I've added a POV template to this section, since it clearly gives undue emphasis to the Whitehead claims, and fails to note that the 2013 Jane's article was later followed by a statement from its publishers clarifying that "The article reflected Mr. Jackson’s opinion on the issue and not that of IHS Jane’s." It should also be noted that the Smithsonian was far from alone in criticising the Jane's article - just as an example the Royal Aeronautical Society issued a statement on the matter ("All available evidence fails to support the claim that Gustave Whitehead made sustained, powered, controlled flights pre-dating those of the Wright brothers. The arguments in favour of such flights are based on a single flawed news article combined with questionable witness testimony gathered more than 30 years after the fact...") and many similar responses can be found. The consensus amongst mainstream historians remains unchanged, and per Wikipedia policy, we must make this clear. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:49, 6 November 2022 (UTC)