Talk:John D. Hertz

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The first taxi cab in America was built by Bristol Engineering in Bristol, Connecticut in 1908 according to designs by Fred Moskovics. It was Nettie Rockwell, the wife of the owner of Bristol, who suggested that the cab be painted yellow. The car was taken to the Auto Show in New York in December of that year where orders were placed for over 200 models. The cab was run by an efficient gasoline engine which was more efficient than the battery powered competition and featured a design that was easy to repair. Fred then established the Yellow Taxicab Company in New York City. Pgbakos (talk) 16:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

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References

Place of birth

The places of birth in the text and in the table on the right are not the same. They are in the same district, though. Does anyone have access to the book by June Skinner Sawyers which is being referenced? Please look up the place of birth and correct the article. --Salanola Ortoluron (talk) 19:38, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Adding sources on background

I added two sources and corrected a citation?
1. bare citation fixed - not sure why this was removed?

• "John Daniel Hertz". University of Pittsburgh Slovak Studies Program. Retrieved January 5, 2017.

2. two references noting his Jewish background without which we do not have a citation supporting the listed categories

• Von Jürgen, Thorwald (February 4, 1974). "Juden in Amerika" (in German). Der Spiegel.
• Bloom, Nate (June 10, 2015). "Jews in the News: Ahmed Zayat, Eric Balfour and Ashley Tisdale". Jewish Federation of Tampa.

Patapsco913 (talk) 15:28, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

Nate Bloom is not a very good source, and there are strong hints of WP:COI associated with him on Wiki. Anmccaff (talk) 18:58, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Hertz himself seemed to use "Austrian", which isn't inconsistent with being in Slovakia,

The Hertz Foundation certainly does, see [http://hertzfoundation.org/about/johnhertz here\. Anmccaff (talk) 18:56, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Slovakia was part of Austria Hungary in 1879.Patapsco913 (talk) 05:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

So what is your point? Are you saying that he is not Jewish or are you saying that he was not born in Slovakia? This should not be a riddle.Patapsco913 (talk) 18:31, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

You used a source claiming (falsely, but that's neither here nor there) it showed that Hertz's father was ethnically Slovakian, and now use the same source to prove he was ethnically Jewish. How about you get some better sources?

The source does not say he is an ethnic Slovak; rather it says: "The local Jewish families usually spoke Yiddish or German at home, probably the case in the Herz family too, and communicated in Slovak with the mostly Lutheran inhabitants of Turiec County where John Daniel, his parents, and all of his siblings were born."Patapsco913 (talk) 23:37, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Next, the Jews of Mittel Europa, like many of the other ethnic and religious groups there, sometimes identified quite strongly with other groups, or with particular governments, and sometimes did not at all. To make a comparison with another place, a 19th century Irishman might view himself as British, or might merely think he had a British passport. See the difference? Anmccaff (talk) 18:55, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Not sure how this applies. All the sources say he is Jewish including the Slovak one I just added.Patapsco913 (talk) 23:37, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

The Hertz Foundation source only states: "John Daniel Hertz, was an Austrian emigrant" which is true: he emigrated from Austria-Hungary. Einstein was a German emigrant but that did not make him an ethnic German.

The only conflict I see is whether he was born in Sklabiňa or Vrútky (Ruttka per the sources), both in present day Slovakia and previously in Austria-Hungary.Patapsco913 (talk) 23:43, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, the territory of present-day Slovakia was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, relations with Austria was monarchical, two separate states had some joint institutions and one Monarch. The sources sometimes are not precise enough, in one of them they point the birthplace to Sklabinyaváralja, that is a third version, this source claims that Ruttka is a common confusion of the birthplace and the earlier would be correct. In Hungarian sources, I found until now only Szlabinya. His self-declaration of ethnicity etc. is not known or at least I don't know about it.(KIENGIR (talk) 18:51, 26 September 2018 (UTC))

References