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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."
With a handle like that, one would imagine he may have been famous for something else...
This has been repeated time and time again for years, it's just that most Americans are simply in the dark of the fact. Those historians that do realise it don't really mention it much.
Patriotism simply gets in the way of the truth sometimes. It's an unfortunate side-effect of human nature.
Richard Pearse: FIRST FLYER
Famous New Zealanders - Richard Pearse
And a sidenote from an article in Time magazine:
"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
A quote from the article, "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."
Newspapers need to have stories like this occassionally. Therefore, Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare, and this guy flew first.
If he actually did, well, tough. Inventions and discoveries often happen contemporaneously. One of them gets the credit, and the others peddle paranoid theories.
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"
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.
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.
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 Wrights were not stupid. They realized the importance of what they were doing and made sure that their efforts would be documented. As the above quote demonstrates, this documentation is what led them to fame and fortune.
In today's competitive marketplace, it is not enough to be a "geek" with a dream. Different people have different kinds of expertise, and one asset any inventor or entrepeneur needs is a good marketing department, one that will see that the right information gets out to the right market segments, ensuring success for all.
Microsoft, RSA, eBay, the tech world is full of companies whose founders had the foresight to recruit and work closely with top talent from the management, financial, and marketing communitites.
So remember the lesson of "Bamboo Dick" Pearse the next time you want to curse out some "marketroid" who doesn't have the same comfort levels around technology as you. His department might be the only thing that keeps your company from joining the long, long list of good business ideas that didn't quite work out.
Heres some more stuff:
Richard Pearse - Features some really cool pics of his aeroplane
Richard Pearse, Aviator - Features a cool VRML 3d model of his flying machine. Remember VRML? Also has some dimensioned drafts.
Richard Pearse - New Zealand Pioneer Aviator - IT's got soem schematics and descriptions of the engine he used.
Lots more cool stuff available out there if you feel like looking.
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
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).
Yet again another claim to prior art in a world stuck on 'One-up-manship'.
This is obviously related to NASA's celebration (along with the rest of us Americans) of the centennial of flight, as measured in years from the first Wright Brothers flight. Reminds me of the other stories of the italian fellow who did radio first and the british fellow who did a version of television first.
Here in America we also celebrate Independence Day on the 4rth of July (unlike many other countries), we consider Ford's Model T to be the first car (we all know it wasn't), we take credit for baseball (a derivative of cricket and many other earlier games)and claim a lot of other national achievements which are just that, American 'achievements'.
What we don't do is tell the rest of the world to celebrate these individuals or events along with us in the same way that we, as a nation, don't celebrate French holidays or Chinese new year, unless it's out of personal regard.
You can argue that we attempt to force our events and holidays down the world's throat via media, etc. but that is all subjective. An example is MY birthday. It's important to me and my friends and family but you probably don't care too much. Now if I was a celebrity you might pay attention for entertainment's sake but that's your choice.
None of these people, Wright Brothers, this Australian fellow or any of the people I mention or who were involved in the events mentioned asked for your attention. They did what they did because they wanted to achieve their goals. Who's on First? Who cares! If you think the person is interesting and should be celebrated for their achievement then do so.
It's all subjective in the end so do what you think is best, give credit based on your own views and let others do the same.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I live a few tens of kilometres from the site of the flight -- Pearse is something of a local celebrity/historical figure, some (funny) pictures including an impression of the original plane.
:).
A replica of his plane is on display in our local museum, sadly it's not online but it's mentioned at the bottom of this article, with the original at the Museum of Transport in Auckland (NZ's largest city, at the top of the North Island, we're in the middle of the South Island's east coast).
As the article states it's hard to verify his accomplishments, and for that reason I believe that the Wright brothers will hold their record for a while unless any stunning new evidence arises. Still, good on Pearse, one of aviation's original hackers
Don't forget Otto Lilienthal, who is considered the father of gliding. He did lots of experiments with a sort of hangglider in Germany, some 10 years before the Wright Bro's.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
...but I don't let childish nationalistic, patriotic gibberish blind me: Richard Pearce did not achieve powered flight before the Wright brothers. As many others have pointed out, he flew a glider into a ravine, and not even very well -- he crashed.
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.
Alberto Santos Dumont was born July 20, 1873, in the village of Cabangu, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. At the age of 18, Santos Dumont was sent by his father to Paris where he devoted his time to the study of chemistry, physics, astronomy and mechanics. His first spherical balloon, "Brasil," ordered from Maison LaChambre, with the capacity of 113 cubic meters, capable of lifting a ballast of 114.4 lbs, and having in its lower part a wicker basket, made its first ascension in Paris on July 4th, 1898. His second balloon, "America," had 500 cubic meters of capacity and gave Santos Dumont the Aero Club of Paris' award to study the atmospheric currents. Twelve balloons had participated in this competition but "America" reached a greater altitude and remained in the air for 22 hours.
Putting aside the aerostation, he began to devote himself towards solving the problem of steering the balloons. His first steered balloon, "Santos Dumont no. 1," ascended on September 18th 1898. Balloons "Santos Dumont no. 2," which wasn't successful, and "Santos Dumont no. 3," built at the Vaugurand workshop, followed. "Santos Dumont no. 3" ascended on November 13th, 1890. It circled a few times the Eiffel Tower, headed to the Park and from there finally headed towards the Bagatelle field where it landed flawlessly.
In view of the success of no. 3 balloon, the Aero Club of France was founded and Mr. Deutsch de La Meurt instituted the "Deutsch Prize" to be awarded to the balloonist who, taking off from Saint-Cloud, circumnavigated the Eiffel Tower and returned to the starting point in less than thirty minutes. This prize was conquered by Santos Dumont on October 19th, 1901, with dirigible no. 6. Besides this prize, Santos Dumont received the sum of 100,000 francs which he distributed in equal parts to his workers and the beggars of Paris.
Dirigibles nos. 7, 8, and 9 followed. With the latter, on July 4th, 1903, Santos Dumont maneuvered over Longchamps, where a military parade was being held in commemoration of Bastille capture.
Once he solved the problem of steering the lighter-than-air vehicle, Santos Dumont devoted himself to the heavier-than-air problem. Aboard the 14-BIS he made his first unsuccessfull attempt in July, 1906. On September 7th, the 14-BIS wheels left the ground for a moment; on the 13th it could reach the height of one meter; on October 23rd, the airplane flew 50 meters. It was on November 12th, 1906 that Santos Dumont's airplane, the 14-BIS, flew a distance of 220 meters at the height of 6 meters and at the speed of 37,358 km/h. Thanks to this flight the "Archdecon Prize" was awarded to Santos Dumont, who had thus, solved the problem of making a heavier-than-air machine take off by its own means.
Santos Dumont died on July 23rd, 1932, in Brazil. According to the law no. 165 of December 5th, 1947, enacted by the National Congress of Brazil and sanctioned by His Excellency President Eurico Gaspar Dutra, Alberto Santos Dumont was permanently listed in the Brazilian Air Ministry Almanac with the rank of Lieutenant Brigadier. He was promoted to the Honorary rank of Air Marshall on September 22, 1955, according to the law no. 3636, and is permanently listed in the Brazilian Air Ministry Almanac.
"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
It probably matters little if your american. "It doesn't matter that we didn't fly first, there's no point changing the history books to fit what actually happened that would be silly!" Making it so that they lose less kudos to another country, by making it less important is cultural xenophobia.
It's not important that the Americans got to the moon first because they didn't make it commercially viable.Albert Einstein discovering relativity wasn't important because he didn't make it commercially viable.
I agree with you that inventions often are made by different people at about the same time. As another poster said, the idea was out, time was ready for flight. I also agree with you that the one who loses the fight for recognition often comes off as a paranoid loon.
But there is an important aspect of international politics here too. Being able to claim that your nation is the 'inventor' of aviation is a powerful tool of propaganda. Maybe not alone, but along with several other claims of invention, you would make your nation look intellectually superior to others. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and would probably give the inhabitants in that country greater confidence in themselves and their abilties or opportunities as inventors, thus spurring new inventions.
I perfectly understand why one would resort to this type of propaganda, but it is nevertheless still propaganda. Even if you or I don't care much what country really 'invented' aviation, somebody appearantly care enough to, if not falsify, then certainly to bend history to fit their means.
Even if in this particular case, the Wright brothers turn out to be the real 'inventors', there are plenty of other interesting examples out there (like Edison vs. Swan).
Patriotism is no excuse for ignorance
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
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!
The Wrights developed the very first theory of propellors, and theirs was 70% efficient. Quite remarkable. The Wrights built their own engine from scratch, did not employ skilled engineers for their first airplane, and devised the first wind tunnel to test airfoil sections. The Wrights did make a survey of all available information on building airplanes, and found what little existed to be totally wrong (such as Lilienthal's data). They did what was likely the first modern R&D program (building successive prototypes, each building on the results from the previous, all targetted at powered flight). The Wrights did it all from scratch.
But they did a great job capturing the Enigma machine from the Germans, in that "based-on-a-true-story" movie :-)
I not saying that they'd shade the truth, but they definitely have an agenda in this matter.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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."
:
t m
This looks like revisionist History to me and searching around uncovered this
"Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight."
http://chrisbrady.itgo.com/pearse/smithsonian.h
Add the fact George Carley's first flight predated the Wright Brothers by a hundred years.
To be fair, the Wrights didn't build the engine.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I hate conspiracy theorists that can't think straight.
First of all, if anyone had flown, they would have gotten widespread attention, as the Wright brothers did. A dozen people saying they witnessed the first flight, but not saying anything for years, just makes no sense at all. That would be like someone having made the trans-atlantic flight before Lindberg, but not telling anybody about it... It's a ridiculous assertion.
But more to the point, let's say someone flew before the Wright brothers... Let's go to extremes an say the Mayans had the technology to build jumbo jets. What does that mean? NOTHING. The Wright brothers' flight wasn't just an interesting outting... it was the spark the led to our modern world of aviation. None of the previous tales of flights led to anything but a handful of books and videos to make some money off the gullible.
If you had even the slightest bit of proof that you'd flown before them, you wouldn't be sitting in a bar, telling your story to uninterested passers-by... You'd have gone to court right away, looking to get some of the money from the brothers' patents. But back then, decades hadn't passed, so there would still be evidence that could be investigated. Convenient that all theses incredible stories aren't brought to light until after there is no evidence left to investigate...
As for witnesses... give me a few days and I'll have hundreds of people swearing that they watched me levitate, and fly around hundreds of feet off the ground.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Lot's of men flew lots of vehicles before the wright brothers. None of this is a surprise. What they achieved was a new thrust-to-weight ratio with their new engine - making their aircraft much more practical.
Heck, the head of the Smithsonian at the time (Langley) demo'd flying machines - but they used steam engines, IIRC.
Clear, Dark Skies
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.
But unlike all the other claimants, the Wright Brothers did a lot of serious scientific research into flight before they finally got it to work on 17 December 1903.
You are forgetting they used wind tunnels to test flight characteristics on scale models, something that I don't think anyone else had. It's an idea so scientifically sound that even today aerodynamicists use wind tunnels to test airplane shapes even with access to modern supercomputers that can study aerodynamic shapes with computational fluid dynamics.
The flight in 1903 was the first powered flight.
The achievement of the Wright's was that they took a scientific approach to the problem of flight (eg. they invented the wind tunnel in the process) and that they were the ones who actually figured out how to control an airplane in flight.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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