Talk:Shivkar Bapuji Talpade
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[edit] Shivkar Bapuji Talpade
Created this article, there are claims that this person is the first to have flown an unmanned plane at the year 1895 in Chowpati beach, Mumbai(Bombay), India in front of a huge crowd.BalanceΩrestored Talk 06:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] ok
looking into this, it seems this is a bona fide aviation pioneer who attempted to build a plane. Claims that the plane did take off are not verifiable today, but a model of the plane seems to survive. The Ufologist bullshit surrounding this should be sectioned off as a separate topic. --dab (𒁳) 09:04, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- Well, do you have something that has crossed checked your claim that the plane did not take off?? Something that's WP:V???, You need to edit those own wordings of yours. BalanceΩrestored Talk 10:21, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Lighter-Than-Air
"It is unclear whether Talpade's craft has managed to take off, and if so, whether it qualified as heavier-than-air."
- This is a new science to study now. If somehow this plane was lighter than air using Mercury it is indeed something that non still have.. Cheers :) 09:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- where is our first reference for the "mercury" claim? the earliest is this "Ancient Astronaut Society" article of 1997 quoted by Knapp. We have no idea what this plane looked like, all we have is ufologist madness. It may be that this is a bona fide aviation pioneer, but we'll need better references. Velakara's book you found at woldcatlibraries seems to be a reasonable source, but probably not easy to lay hands on. Judging from the Times of India article, Velkara's book quotes a student of Talpade's claiming the thing took off. That's hardly independent confirmation. If you tie a chunk of mercury to a hot air balloon, that's still "lighter-than-air", even if you imagine your balloon is "mercury vortex powered". dab (𒁳) 10:51, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Comment: Interesting topic. It is unfortunate that the surrounding pseudo-scientific and nationalistic fluff makes it so difficult to reliably determine what Talpade's genuine achievements might have been. Abecedare 14:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Source for the 1895 demonstration
apparently the source for the demonstration witnessed by the Maharaja is a Kesari article. The Deccan Herald article references it, but doesn't identify the edition. It also states that the Kesari article doesn't identify the date. Needless to say, Kesari is no credible source, and paints the whole thing with a crackpot national mysticist tinge from the very beginning. If we want to evaluate if such a demonstration has ever taken place, we'll need to
- identify the original Kesari article
- look for other contemporary accounts: if this demonstration had really been successful and attended by the Maharaja, there would have been non-crackpot newspaper accounts
As long as we don't have such evidence, we'll have to consider the flight demonstration an urban legend. The ToI article seems to confirm that there is actually a surviving model of the aircraft, but as long as we don't have a description of the model, we cannot judge what kind of flight it would have been capable of, if any. The ToI innocently and cluelessly parrots the "solar energy combined with mercury" crackpottery, so we can be sure the journalist had not seen the craft or talked to anybody who knew anything about aviation. Our best bet will be the "recent exhibition on flying at Vile Parle where a model of 'Marutsakha' was exhibited". If that exhibition can be verified, it may be possible to get into contact with somebody involved and ask them for pointers to this model.
You need to realise, that in ufology it is perfectly normal to simply make up claims, and misquote people as you see fit. A beautiful example is the "Alexander's UFO" described at Vimana#In_pseudoscience_and_UFOlogy: an alleged historical account was simply made up by some guy in 1959. The claim was not just (a) taken for granted without reference by later authors, but also (b) modified with every repetition, so that by now, you can find at least five mutually contradictory accounts. In Ufology, the question is never "is it true", but "who came up with it, and how was it modified subsequently". --dab (𒁳) 13:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
at least "former principal defence scientific officer D. H. Bedekar" seems to exist: [1]. Unfortunately, no email address. If we could contact this chap, he might be able to point us to information. If we really want to research this, our best bet would be to find a Wikipedian resident in Mumbai willing to try and contact this Pradeep Vijayakar character of TNN Mumbai (by now (2006-08) apparently president of Mumbai Press Club[2]) and ask him about that "recent exhibition", or try to contact Vile Parle local authorities it. the contact address of the club is pclub at vsnl.com or pressclubmumbai at yahoo.com. But their website seems to be chronically broken. Maybe some Hindi speaker could email them and ask them for Vijayakar's email. He probably won't be able to remember much about this 2004 article (on which he evidently did shoddy research), but he might be able to cough up details on that mysterious exhibition. dab (𒁳) 13:53, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
