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Kiwi Flight Before the Wright Brothers?
houseofmore writes "The Toronto Star is is reporting that New Zealander Richard Pearse may have very well made several flights beginning almost nine months before the Wright Brothers ever got off the ground. It also notes that "Mad Pearse's" machine was in some ways more advanced than the first Wright Flyer."
From the article: ... funny country>
:)
"New Zealand is still a young country and it's a
Good stuff. Makes me want to go visit.
Sig.i>
This is news.
Everywhere else, it's history.
(This
With a handle like that, one would imagine he may have been famous for something else...
"Mad Pearse," also known as "Bamboo Dick" for his building material of choice...
The first thing I thought of was OUCH!!!
man
No manual entry for
I see what you're saying!
IF we start to believe that the Wright Brothers weren't the first to conduct a powered, controlled flight then the terrorists have already won. Won't somebody PLEASE think of the childeren!
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
An American inventor named Gustave Whitehead allegedly flew in Aug 1901. Here's a site that explains more of his story. BTW, my ex-girlfriend's parents own the land where the Wright Brothers had their shop (now a hotel), so I'm practically an expert on the matter.
BTW, my ex-girlfriend's parents own the land where the Wright Brothers had their shop (now a hotel), so I'm practically an expert on the matter.
My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend knows this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass-out at 31 Flavors last night and who's parent's own the patent office that Einstein worked at, so if you have any questions about the theory of relativity I'm practically an expert on the matter.
"There's nothing but a handful of informally collected eyewitness accounts to confirm Pearse's first flight"
"And I swear officer, I saw a dozen lights flying through the sky and one landed near me! This little grey man with huge eyes stepped out...."
Too bad every last one of the records of this alien abd-- er, historic flight were lost or destroyed.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Here in America we also celebrate Independence Day on the 4rth of July (unlike many other countries)
You mean, other countries don't celebrate the _American_ Independence day?!
I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to tell such LIES!
Why not just wait for Prince Charles to become king, and it'll happen anyway?
Anyway, I'm guessing the next person to be put on a NZ banknote is going to be Frodo Baggins
are flightless, any fool knows that!
What do you mean RTFA?
That was classic intercourse!
But they did a great job capturing the Enigma machine from the Germans, in that "based-on-a-true-story" movie :-)
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result, birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know"
This is /.. Nobody here is interested with french achievements. We only care about french failures, smelly cheeses, hairy armpits and cowardly surrenders.
I'm an American.
</disclaimer>
Watching all the dicussion's been funny. No one knows who did it first, but they all know the Americans are jingoists because we too claim to be first in flight
Italians claim they did it first.
The French claim they did it first.
Kiwis say "No we did it first!"
Now, Brazilians are piping up.
It seems to me that every country is definining the first successful flight based on whatever small step their pioneer took.
What you guys need to do is get together, come up with a firm list of requirements for what makes a flight The First Flight, figure out who did it, then talk Rupert Murdock into producing a special for his TV stations. This definitely sounds like something Fox Television would show.
...had been at Kitty Hawk in ... when was it, 1903? Would he have been in the Wright place at the wrong time?
(I wonder how many Karma points that's going to cost me?)
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
The article is trying to imply ailerons are more advanced than wing warping? Obviously the author doesn't read slashdot. Air Force to Test Aeroelastic Wings
Why have 1 person driving a backhoe when you could employ 20 with shovels?