Talk:J. W. Dunne

message: Books include _An Experiment with Time_ (1st ed. 1927) and _The Serial Universe_. 
experiment
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0571059961/
i found serial universe in z-shops. the earliest date for it was 1938, but i don't if thats the first printing or not.
:See the bibliography for a fuller list of his writings. -- Steelpillow (talk) 11:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Books

message: As I just stumbled upon this article again and tried to fix a few small areas, I realized that tiny "patches" would not suffice. This article requires an entire rewrite. Comments? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 12:11, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know about biographies, I'm just trying to improve the material on his aircraft. At the moment there are three half-baked articles, each covering a more or less arbitrary selection of types and scraps of theory amid much repeated content, and with several types not covered at all. IMHO it would be better to merge them all into a single article on say Dunne aircraft, and move the list over to there. Good idea? -- Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:27, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Probably makes sense but in dealing with a biographical article on the individual behind these inventions and scientific theories, a lot more attention has to be paid to the person's life. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:40, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: A lot of the information in the article is at variance with sources and will need to be scruptiously checked. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 13:43, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Tell me about it :( . I'm still arguing over the the list of aircraft. -- Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:57, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

text: The more I find in his books and elsewhere, the more suspect becomes the fine detail of the biographical dates and the like. I think the best option is some heavy pruning and maybe a bunch of fact tags to boot. But I do wonder what was the original source for much of the article, biographical material on him is hard to find. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:32, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Complete revision required

message: This 1913 paper in Flight links the Zanonia form with several designers. And this one links Etrich (with a 1904 design) to it. There seem to be a few other mentions of Dunne and Zanonia in the Flight archive, in the same breath as it were, but only saying that Dunne's designs fall into the Zanonia type, and not that his work was inspired by the seed. GraemeLeggett (talk) 15:36, 8 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Geoffrey de Havilland's autobiography Sky Fever, Chapter 5 is explicit: "... a machine based on the vee shape of a Zanonia seed, which he [Dunne] had observed was a good glider." De Havilland replaced Cody and Dunne as the Farnborough Balloon Factory's aircraft designer, about 20 moths after they were kicked out. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:05, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: [Update] de Havilland was wrong, or at best highly misleading. Dunne explained fully why he rejected the Zanonia form in his 1913 lecture to the Aeronautical Society. Comments made in this lecture and elsewhere, and also made by his brother Frank to the writer Constance Babington Smith, make it clear that he was in fact inspired by watching seagulls. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 07:00, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Zanonia link 

message: Dunne was born in what is now Eire (Southern Ireland) but in those days was part of the United Kingdom. He was born a British subject and remained so after partition. As a young child he went to South Africa and later came to England but, AFAIK, never returned to Eire. What nationality should we give him in the article? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:27, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, nobody is both watching and caring. I'll change it to what I think - that he was born a British subject and remained a British subject throughout his life. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:40, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to clarify: At this time the whole of Ireland was subject to British rule. His father John Hart Dunne came from an Irish family (with Scottish blood too), made his career in the British Army and married an English woman, Julia Elizabeth Chapman. His oldest sibling, sister Marion, was born in Scotland near a British Army camp there. J.W. was born in Ireland, also near or even in a British Army camp. His two subsequent brothers were born in England, Leonard in Warwickshire and Frank in London. In other words, they were following their father's postings around and the fact that John Hart's second child was born in his own country of origin appears to be pure coincidence. Technically J.W. is roughly half-Irish and half-English. He may be found remarking wryly on this state of affairs in one of his children's books, "An Experiment with St. George" if I remember correctly. But his official nationality was British, and that's what counts here. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:00, 20 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nationality 

message: This has erupted again. We have to stick to WP:RS. I'd suggest that editors wishing to emphasise Dunne's Irishness or to cut cited content might find it useful to read the above, then seek reliable sources for their PoV and discuss their proposed edits here first. It is a recurrent meme in informal sources but has no basis in reliable documentation. Meanwhile I have tried to tone down the previous over-emphasis on Englishness and clarify his father's status (see also the next discussion below). — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:20, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: June 2022

message: General Sir John Hart Dunne was born a native Irishman, in Ireland, which at that time it made him a British subject with a British passport. He rose to the rank of General in the Royal Scots Fusiliers (Duke of Edinburgh's Own), a regiment of the British Army. As such, when we qualify the nationaloty of the man "John Hart Dunne" we might qualify him as British or Irish depending on context. We may say that he was an Irishman, known as General Sir John Hart Dunne, or that he was British General Sir John hart Dunne. But what is totally wrong is to write that the titled individual was "Irish General" Sir John Hart Dunne. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 18:43, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Pretty sure the Irish didnt have a seperate Army in 1875. Perhaps an Irish-born British General Sir ..  may be better. Although I dont see why the origin Dunne's parents are really relevant or the unreferenced bit about ancestry. MilborneOne (talk) 18:48, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:   the subtopic below helps explain why I opened the above discussion; another user is insisting on making a factually incorrect edit. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

text:  They also ignored WP:BRD, which I had just asked them to respect in this edit comment and instead reverted my edit. The article history shows that this has been going on for a couple of weeks. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:35, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

text:   Sorry to ping again, but what bits about his ancestry are unreferenced? The first sentence cites a national census, the whole para cites a book half of which is dedicated to him. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 17:56, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

text: The following reply was posted to my user talk page by . I have moved it here, where it belongs. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

text: No. The phrase "Irish general" implies a general in the Irish army. As I point out above, he was not. Your logic-chopping is misplaced. (Also, your grasp of the nuances of English grammar and of Wikipedia etiquette are wanting in other ways, but we can get to those later; one thing at a time.) — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Were the subject born a few years earlier or later, this would be less ambiguous, but I have to agree that it doesn’t work here as “Irish general”. Qwirkle (talk) 20:17, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

text: The Anglo-Irish were an identifiable class primarily of English descent; they were more like ex-patriots than natives. We have no reliable source for the origins of the Dunne family, so it would be premature to use that description here. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:39, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: As others have commentated, whatever he was, he wasn't an "Irish general". I am also inclined to agree with Steelpillow's comments above. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:28, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, really he was, in certain senses; in another context this description would be workable. Here, it creates needless ambiguity. Qwirkle (talk) 17:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nationality of father 

message: :The following reply was posted to my user talk page by . I have moved it here, where it belongs. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: No. The phrase "Irish general" implies a general in the Irish army. As I point out above, he was not. Your logic-chopping is misplaced. (Also, your grasp of the nuances of English grammar and of Wikipedia etiquette are wanting in other ways, but we can get to those later; one thing at a time.) — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:21, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Were the subject born a few years earlier or later, this would be less ambiguous, but I have to agree that it doesn’t work here as “Irish general”. Qwirkle (talk) 20:17, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

text: The Anglo-Irish were an identifiable class primarily of English descent; they were more like ex-patriots than natives. We have no reliable source for the origins of the Dunne family, so it would be premature to use that description here. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 08:39, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: As others have commentated, whatever he was, he wasn't an "Irish general". I am also inclined to agree with Steelpillow's comments above. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:28, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, really he was, in certain senses; in another context this description would be workable. Here, it creates needless ambiguity. Qwirkle (talk) 17:19, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irish vs Irishman 

message: ... related to an editor of this article: See this talk page. Valerius Tygart (talk) 14:23, 30 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: For possible COI issues...