The "Santa Clara"

Quotes:
The year was 1883, barely 2 years after "the Shootout at the OK Corral" in Tombstone, Arizona. The old West was still in existence at this time, and the Indian Wars were raging throughout the Southwest. Only a couple hundred miles to the west, another history was being made which would pave the way for the next century, and perhaps the next millennium: A man actually flew on the Otay Mesa in San Diego County, California! His name was John Montgomery. Montgomery's 1st glider flight, (certainly, practically the first anywhere, barring England's *Sir George Cayley's 1st "launching" of a coachman in 1848) was in 1883: as maintained by the San Diego Historical Society, which documented Montgomery's work on the Otay Mesa from 1882. This would be a minor point, although some historians claim 1884 instead, there is still the point not addressed by historians who fail to see a connection with Montgomery's publications in Chicago in 1893 and 1894, subsequent to his development of a tandem-wing flyer, and *Prof. Samuel P. Langley's parallel and "coincidental" emergence of a tandem-wing flyer in 1896 in Washington D.C.! On the other hand, it takes a greater leap of faith to believe the Wright's had influenced Alexander Graham Bell (and his commissioning of Glenn Curtiss) or European pioneers such as Dumont and Voisin, simply because they came a few years after the Wrights. In reality, Most aviation pioneers developed independently: Voisin, in France, maintained until his death that no one in Europe (or at least in France) had even heard of the Wrights until 1908, by then the Europeans had flown powered fight since 1906 starting with Santos-Dumont. His native Brazilians regard Dumont as the "Father of Aviation" even today, (admittedly, a mythical point). The argument that Montgomery did not influence other pioneers would also render the Wrights as insignificant since they did not influence anyone immediately, since they preferred to work in secrecy until at least 1905, if not 1908. European pioneers, by this time, were already forging ahead and making their own powered and controlled aircraft without knowledge of, or giving credence to the Wrights until August 1908."

-Forgotten Aviation Pioneers

Description:
The Santa Clara was a tandem-wing glider, the first of its class. It made recorded flights well before the aviators known as the Wright Brothers. Santa Clara was used in hundreds of experiments, and made flights at carnivals and fairs that drew hundreds to watch the spectacular "Flying Man".

Related:

 * The "Evergreen"


 * John Joeseph Montgomery


 * Tandem-Wing Glider