GALCIT Colloquium

One of America's principal pioneers of manned flight, John J. Montgomery's place in aviation history has often been misunderstood or ignored entirely. However, as early as 1883, Montgomery initiated a series of investigations near San Diego to understand the physical basis of lift and its generation through the flow of air over various surfaces. Trained in physics, he explored the principles of flight theory through experimental devices and demonstrated those theories through applied engineering with both scale models and flying machines. This lecture provides a historical perspective on the difficulty of flow analysis 140 years ago, placing Montgomery as one of the first scientists to develop a basis for aerodynamics as a science.