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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."
Imagine... building such a machine from scratch, with hardly any prior experience to build upon. According to the article he had to figure out and build everything himself up to the engine and the prop. Then... climbing into that thing and actually flying it. Remember, this guy didn't attend flight school first.
Anyway, here's a picture of the replica and a lot more info.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
As another post already mentioned, this story has been around a long while. It is even incorporated into Peter Jackson's fake documentary, "Forgotten Silver". Made for NZ television, it's about a mythical filmmaker named Colin McKenzie who supposedly pioneered all sorts of things like color film, etc. Along the way, he happened to film Pearse's flight. The movie shows the recently 'dicovered' footage, and does such a good job of it that a large number of viewers took it as real, and then got very mad at Mr Jackson when he pointed out it was false. Happily, New Zealanders now seem to be quite keen on him again, what with the success of that Lords and Rings movie. "Forgotten Silver" is on DVD, and you should check it out.
And in a few months, I get to travel to NZ again...hooray!
Cheers, Mike V.
http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/WrBr/inventors/Li lienthal.html
For that matter the Wrights themselves flew long before they 'flew.' In gliders rather than powered planes.
Pearse's plane seems to have been something more than a mere glider, but less than a true airplane, which the article in question seems to say Pearse himself fully realized.
What perhaps Pearse didn't realize is that the Wrights were no more 'schooled' then he was, one of the facts that led many to deny the Wrights had actually flown. I mean really, just who were these upstart bicycle mechanics from *Ohio* who claimed to have accomplished that which those who the world acknowledged as having the best engineering minds had failed at, time and again?
Unlike Pearse though, the Wrights were highly scientifc and methodical in their approach. Taking every step slowly. Testing, testing, and then testing some more. Working up the final product in careful measured steps.
The true legacy of the Wrights wasn't the first flight. Just as Tesla left little for anyone else to do other than refinement in the world of electricity, the Wrights left little for others to do in the theoretical field of subsonic aeronautics. Some of their theoretical principles were so advanced that they weren't commonly accepted as true until after WWII.
It doesn't really matter who 'flew' first. The Wrights gave us the *field* of flight.
All that having been said Pearse certainly sounds like the sort of 'loon' I could spend a happy lifetime hanging out with.
KFG
Other people had glided before, but no one had powered themselves off of the ground.
Erm, yes they had.
Do a google on
"John Stringfellow"
"Clément Ader"
"Gustav Albin Weißkopf"
All of whom flew before both Richard Pearse and the Wright brothers.
The history of why the Wright Brothers are considered to be the first is almost as interesting as the history of aviation. For instance, this sounds plausible:
Dr. Peter Jakab, a curator at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., doesn't deny that Pearse got off the ground. "But what he flew was essentially a powered glider flying into a ravine. So it wasn't a true powered flight. He's just one of many pre-Wright claimants."
But as the Smithsonian can keep hold of the Wright Flyer only as long as the Smithsonian never claim that somebody else got there first, one has to say Dr. Jakab isn't exactly impartial.
If you ask me who was first is irrelivant. It was an idea whose time had come.
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
The credit (or lack thereof) given to the inventor or discoverer throughout history has always been to the one that speaks loudest to the commons. We all know the debate that Columbus did not "discover" America, as there were plenty of people there first.
A lesser known example but just as true is was the fight between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray over who invented the telephone (Google other resources). In that battle, Bell filed a patent and Gray filed his caveat (intent to file a patent) the same day.
Sadly, we all too commonly think that a "single" person or firm must have invented something, while others often have inventions that predate them. It's no wonder the patent office is getting confused (although they really should try cutting down on the duplicates).
It lies in this technicality. They were the first to take off under their own power from an altitude equal or less than the spot that they landed from.
Pearce's flights are described as being made from a hill, landing in a spot near a creek at a lower elevation.
People had been gliding for years before the Wright's. People built much better gliders then the Wright Flyer. Glenn Curtis built a great plane very shortly after the Wrights. While the Wrights stored their plane for 4 years after the 17th Dec 1903... Trying to lock down patents on it. The fact however remains that by the majority of serious aeronautical engineers they are the birth of the age of powered flight.
Patriotism... maybe a little... but spliting hairs is much more of an apt description... I for one think that it's a valid distinction.