Craig S. Harwood – författare
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2 produkter
2 produkter
251 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The Wright brothers have long received the lion's share of credit for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in flying gliders twenty years before the Wright's powered flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western Hemisphere.Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S. Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to take to the skies. They show that history's nearly exclusive focus on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for Montgomery's pioneering role in aeronautical innovation.As a scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained, demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery's designs, and helped change society's attitude toward what was considered ""the impossible art"" of aerial navigation.Inventors and aviators working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and Fogel place Montgomery's story and his exploits in the broader context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation industry from the very beginning.
Bridget's Gambit (Volume 4)
A Saga of Family Enterprise in Gold Rush California
Inbunden, Engelska, 2026
388 kr
Skickas inom 5-8 vardagar
In 1828 Bridget Miranda Evoy escaped famine-stricken Ireland with her children for a better life in America. But the relief she desperately sought was elusive. Within two years, she was a widow and was left raising her five children after the untimely death of her husband. Finding herself in dire straits in “The Gateway to the West”, Bridget's Gambit tells the story of how this remarkable young widow managed to make her way to California and became an entrepreneur during the Gold Rush. In this engrossing family saga, Craig S. Harwood recounts the adventures and accomplishments of this singularly determined woman and her daughters, from a harrowing overland crossing in the winter of 1849 to innovative efforts to build an empire in defiance of the social and gender constraints of the Victorian Era. When Bridget and her family arrived in the California Territory, they saw opportunities where others did not, charting a path rooted in a prescient view of the rapidly evolving western economy. By pursuing commercial ventures that served emerging communities in Northern California, the family was able to ascend the social ladder and exert influence, doing business with many early shapers of California statehood. Bridget's Gambit captures the stark reality of the patriarchal world of business in the Old West—and the extraordinary lengths to which Bridget and her daughters went in creating a diverse web of financial enterprises that brought some of the most prominent American businessmen into her orbit. Harwood's spirited biography of an audacious, persistent woman brings to the forefront the largely unheralded contributions of women in the forming of California statehood—and restores a lost chapter to the history of the American West.