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Domain: nzedge.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to nzedge.com.

Comments · 9

  1. Re:Flight? by BiggerIsBetter · · Score: 1 · on Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison

    Well there was also a New Zealander who flew before the Wrights but at that time it took news 6 months to arrive from New Zealand by sailing ship. That would be Richard Pearse, of Waitohi Flat, Temuka, New Zealand.

    "Richard Pearse: "Mad Pearse", "Bamboo Dick", self-taught inventor, prophetic designer, trail blazing aviator and eccentric visionary. On or about 31st March 1903 a reclusive New Zealand farmer Richard Pearse climbed into a self-built monoplane and flew for about 140 metres before crashing into a gorse hedge on his Waitohi property . Even at half the distance Pearse must have felt the liberating but anxious exhilaration of flying. There is uncertainty about whether it met the definitions of sustained flight, but it came eight months before the Wright Brothers entered the record books at Kitty Hawk North Carolina on 17th December 1903." -- http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/pearse.html
  2. Already doing it by Xybot · · Score: 3, Interesting · on Newest Energy Source — Pond Scum

    Been there, done that. Next you'll be telling us the the first controlled flight took place in America.

  3. Rutherford and Franklin by BigBadaboom · · Score: 1 · on Scientists Biographies for 5th and 6th Graders?

    Two personal heroes of mine:

    Ernest Rutherford - A great scientist with several ground breaking discoveries, a national hero, and the mentor to numerous other Nobel Prize winners, such as Bohr, Geiger and Chadwick. Admired by Einstein.

    Rosalind Franklin A heartbreaking and inspiring story about a scientist that eschewed fame (and was cheated of it) but was instead dedicated to science for science sake and not the politics.

  4. Re:airplanes, aeroplanes by good+soldier+svejk · · Score: 1 · on Lexus Computers Infected Via Bluetooth

    Those are called eyewiteness accounts. For what it is worth, Pearse more or less agreed with you. He felt that because he crashed upon landing, his March 1902 flight was not successful. He credited the Wright brothers. However, I did not say Pearse beat the Wrights to the punch on flight. I said he beat them to the punch on adding the internal an combustion engine and control surfaces. His engine was an immediate success, but the control surfaces, while more advanced than the Wrights, were not fully refined by the time of his 1902 takeoff and crash.

  5. Re:An American invention? by yuri+benjamin · · Score: 1 · on History of the Automatic Teller

    The Brits invent the prototype, then the Americans refine it, market it, and take the credit. From Democracy to ...

    Good ol' US of A - The best democracy money can buy!

    ... from Trains to Planes.

    Richard Pearse was a New Zealander.

  6. Re:Your Sig More Info by CavemanKiwi · · Score: 2, Informative · on Commodore - Back In The Hardware Biz At Last?

    http://www.nzedge.com/heroes/pearse.html Read up .. I think he definitely deserves a mention whenever history of early flight is brought up.

  7. Re:The real invventors of the airplane. by STrinity · · Score: 1 · on (At Least) 100 Years Of Powered Human Flight
    Sorry but a 25 year old man in New Zeland was really flying a year before them and had a more advanced plane with real control surfaces and could manuver turns.

    Try again -- even Pearse said he didn't achieve controlled flight, and gave credit to the Wright Bros.
    Pearse himself, in two letters, the first to Dunedin's Evening Star, published on May 10th 1915, the second published in the Christchurch Star on September 15th 1928, didn't believe, by his own rigorous standards, that he had achieved 'proper' flight, which for him meant a powered take-off followed by "sustained and controlled flight". Pearse's flights, characterised by powered take-offs but followed by erratic descents, failed to meet this criteria. In the letters he states that he set out to solve the problem of aerial navigation in February or March 1904, and also concedes that pre-eminence should be given to the Wright Brothers, who flew on 17 December 1903 and achieved aerial navigation in 1905
  8. Re:Burrell Cannon by Xybot · · Score: 1 · on Replica Flyer Foiled By Weather

    ...next you'll be trying to convince me America was the worlds first democracy....

  9. Mad Pearse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative · on Kiwi Flight Before the Wright Brothers?
    More info on the man in question:

    Richard Pearse: FIRST FLYER

    Famous New Zealanders - Richard Pearse

    And a sidenote from an article in Time magazine:

    Flight Pioneers
    RICHARD PEARSE
    His neighbors called him "Mad Pearse," but in March 1903 the reclusive New Zealand farmer climbed into a monoplane he had built at his Waitohi property and flew for about 140 m before crashing into a hedge. It may not have been a sustained flight, but it was the most successful powered take-off until the Wright brothers entered the record books in December 1903.