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Thank you, my friend CW5 Jack Cardwell for honoring New Zealand aviation pioneer Richard Pearse.
Background on his aircraft from worldhistory.us/american-history/richard-pearse-designed-and-built-early-flying-machine.php
"Pearse was 26 years old when he flew a high-wing monoplane he designed and built on or about March 31, 1903. That was less than eight months before the Wright Brothers’ Flier took off at the Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina on Dec. 17 of that same year.
The New Zealander’s flying machine had a 21-foot wing span. The controls consisted of small, movable inset wing panels; a vertical rudder mounted behind a fixed vertical panel above the flat-section wing; and a movable horizontal surface mounted centrally on the rear wing spar. The operator sat beneath the engine and wing.
In reconstructions of the flying machine, the propeller wasn’t able to move a significant volume of air to generate much thrust.
Witnesses claimed that Pearse’s flying machine made at least a few short glides under power. However, the machine could not gain altitude or maintain level flight.
Some parts and pieces of Pearse’s flying machine and engine have survived more than a century after they were built."
Images:
1. Monument to Richard Pearse, Waitohi, New Zealand just near Timaru.
2. Richard Pearse
3. The Pearse Family Orchestra, Richard on left. Courtesy Geoff Rodliffe
Biography
"Richard William Pearse was born on 3 December 1877 at Waitohi Flat, Temuka, New Zealand, the fourth of nine children of Sarah Ann Brown and her husband, Digory Sargent Pearse, a farmer. Their property, Trewarlet, was 5½ miles inland from Temuka. They were a cultured family with their own orchestra; Richard played the cello.
By disposition quiet, introspective, gentle and somewhat aloof, Pearse was a dreamer even at school. After finishing his primary education at Waitohi in 1893 he wanted to study engineering at Canterbury College, but the family could not afford it. Instead, when he turned 21, Pearse was given the use of a nearby 100-acre farm block.
Here Pearse built a workshop, designed his own forge and lathe, and proceeded to spend most of his time inventing gadgets. His first patented invention, dating from 1902, was an ingenious new style of bicycle, bamboo-framed with a vertical-drive pedal action, rod-and-rack gearing system, back-pedal rim-brakes and integral tyre pumps.
But flying, not cycling, was his dream. Through Scientific American Pearse kept in touch with experimentation overseas. There is evidence he was working on ideas for powered flight from 1899 and had built his first two-cylinder petrol engine by 1902. He then constructed, using bamboo, tubular steel, wire and canvas, a low aspect ratio monoplane.
Of prophetic design, it closely resembled a modern microlight aircraft in appearance. After considerable taxiing on his farm paddocks Pearse made his first public flight attempt down Main Waitohi Road adjacent to his farm. After a short distance aloft, perhaps 50 yards, he crashed on top of his own gorse fence. No details were recorded, by Pearse or onlookers, of this tentative flight. In two letters, published in 1915 and 1928, the inventor writes of February or March 1904 as the time when he set out to solve the problem of 'aerial navigation'. He also states that he did not achieve proper flight and did not beat the American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright who flew on 17 December 1903. However, a great deal of eyewitness testimony, able to be dated circumstantially, suggests that 31 March 1903 was the likely date of this first flight attempt. (The year 1902 also has its advocates.) Pearse continued his flying experiments, achieving several further powered take-offs or long hops, most of them witnessed. None of them, in terms of length or control, was a true flight by any strict definition. In July 1906 he patented his aircraft.
Whether or not Pearse flew in any acceptable sense, and regardless of the exact date, his first aircraft was a remarkable invention embodying several far-sighted concepts: a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades driven by a unique double-acting horizontally opposed petrol engine.
A failure as a farmer and treated with considerable scepticism by most neighbours (Cranky Dick, Mad Pearse and Bamboo Dick were three of his nicknames), Richard Pearse shifted in 1911 to South Otago where he farmed at Loudens Gully near Milton. There he devised various pieces of ingenious farm equipment before being conscripted into the Otago Infantry Regiment in May 1917. Although he was sent overseas in January 1918, illness prevented Pearse from seeing any action and he returned to New Zealand in October that year.
In 1921 he moved to Christchurch where he built three houses. In the garage workshop of one in Woolston, Pearse in the early 1930s set about designing and building a second aircraft, his Utility Plane. He applied for a patent in November 1943 and it was finally approved in 1949. Constructed in great secrecy, Pearse's convertiplane anticipated the main feature of the Harrier jump jet and other similar aircraft with a tilting engine to allow for vertical take-off and landing. Pearse hoped this extraordinary aircraft would become aviation's Model T Ford, 'the private plane for the million', able to be flown from one's backyard.
Embittered and disillusioned by the lack of interest from aviation companies, Pearse became increasingly paranoid and was admitted in June 1951 to Sunnyside Mental Hospital. There he died on 29 July 1953 following a heart attack. He had never married.
Other (unpatented) inventions by Pearse included a needle threader, power cycle, recording machine, magic viewer, harp, power generator, potato planter, topdresser, motorised discing machine, and two sorts of musical box. His Utility Plane is held at the Museum of Transport and Technology, Auckland, and remnants of his first monoplane are held there and at the Timaru museum.
Richard Pearse died in obscurity. His secretive and solitary manner of working resulted in his genius being unrecognised in his own lifetime, and he had no influence whatever upon the course of aviation history. Unfortunately, his posthumous reputation as a visionary inventor has been clouded by a fruitless controversy as to whether or not he flew before the Wright brothers' fully attested flights. Pearse should be remembered as an inventor of extraordinary imagination and foresight whose vision far outreached the capacity of his simple workshop technology. He was nevertheless by a wide margin (whether in 1902, 1903 or 1904) the first British subject to achieve a powered take-off in a heavier-than-air machine of his own design and construction.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3p19/pearse-richard-william
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" PriceSGT Jim Arnold Maj Robert Thornton SPC Douglas Bolton Cynthia Croft SSgt Boyd Herrst TSgt Joe C. SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSG William Jones PO3 Craig Phillips PVT Mark Zehner
Background on his aircraft from worldhistory.us/american-history/richard-pearse-designed-and-built-early-flying-machine.php
"Pearse was 26 years old when he flew a high-wing monoplane he designed and built on or about March 31, 1903. That was less than eight months before the Wright Brothers’ Flier took off at the Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina on Dec. 17 of that same year.
The New Zealander’s flying machine had a 21-foot wing span. The controls consisted of small, movable inset wing panels; a vertical rudder mounted behind a fixed vertical panel above the flat-section wing; and a movable horizontal surface mounted centrally on the rear wing spar. The operator sat beneath the engine and wing.
In reconstructions of the flying machine, the propeller wasn’t able to move a significant volume of air to generate much thrust.
Witnesses claimed that Pearse’s flying machine made at least a few short glides under power. However, the machine could not gain altitude or maintain level flight.
Some parts and pieces of Pearse’s flying machine and engine have survived more than a century after they were built."
Images:
1. Monument to Richard Pearse, Waitohi, New Zealand just near Timaru.
2. Richard Pearse
3. The Pearse Family Orchestra, Richard on left. Courtesy Geoff Rodliffe
Biography
"Richard William Pearse was born on 3 December 1877 at Waitohi Flat, Temuka, New Zealand, the fourth of nine children of Sarah Ann Brown and her husband, Digory Sargent Pearse, a farmer. Their property, Trewarlet, was 5½ miles inland from Temuka. They were a cultured family with their own orchestra; Richard played the cello.
By disposition quiet, introspective, gentle and somewhat aloof, Pearse was a dreamer even at school. After finishing his primary education at Waitohi in 1893 he wanted to study engineering at Canterbury College, but the family could not afford it. Instead, when he turned 21, Pearse was given the use of a nearby 100-acre farm block.
Here Pearse built a workshop, designed his own forge and lathe, and proceeded to spend most of his time inventing gadgets. His first patented invention, dating from 1902, was an ingenious new style of bicycle, bamboo-framed with a vertical-drive pedal action, rod-and-rack gearing system, back-pedal rim-brakes and integral tyre pumps.
But flying, not cycling, was his dream. Through Scientific American Pearse kept in touch with experimentation overseas. There is evidence he was working on ideas for powered flight from 1899 and had built his first two-cylinder petrol engine by 1902. He then constructed, using bamboo, tubular steel, wire and canvas, a low aspect ratio monoplane.
Of prophetic design, it closely resembled a modern microlight aircraft in appearance. After considerable taxiing on his farm paddocks Pearse made his first public flight attempt down Main Waitohi Road adjacent to his farm. After a short distance aloft, perhaps 50 yards, he crashed on top of his own gorse fence. No details were recorded, by Pearse or onlookers, of this tentative flight. In two letters, published in 1915 and 1928, the inventor writes of February or March 1904 as the time when he set out to solve the problem of 'aerial navigation'. He also states that he did not achieve proper flight and did not beat the American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright who flew on 17 December 1903. However, a great deal of eyewitness testimony, able to be dated circumstantially, suggests that 31 March 1903 was the likely date of this first flight attempt. (The year 1902 also has its advocates.) Pearse continued his flying experiments, achieving several further powered take-offs or long hops, most of them witnessed. None of them, in terms of length or control, was a true flight by any strict definition. In July 1906 he patented his aircraft.
Whether or not Pearse flew in any acceptable sense, and regardless of the exact date, his first aircraft was a remarkable invention embodying several far-sighted concepts: a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades driven by a unique double-acting horizontally opposed petrol engine.
A failure as a farmer and treated with considerable scepticism by most neighbours (Cranky Dick, Mad Pearse and Bamboo Dick were three of his nicknames), Richard Pearse shifted in 1911 to South Otago where he farmed at Loudens Gully near Milton. There he devised various pieces of ingenious farm equipment before being conscripted into the Otago Infantry Regiment in May 1917. Although he was sent overseas in January 1918, illness prevented Pearse from seeing any action and he returned to New Zealand in October that year.
In 1921 he moved to Christchurch where he built three houses. In the garage workshop of one in Woolston, Pearse in the early 1930s set about designing and building a second aircraft, his Utility Plane. He applied for a patent in November 1943 and it was finally approved in 1949. Constructed in great secrecy, Pearse's convertiplane anticipated the main feature of the Harrier jump jet and other similar aircraft with a tilting engine to allow for vertical take-off and landing. Pearse hoped this extraordinary aircraft would become aviation's Model T Ford, 'the private plane for the million', able to be flown from one's backyard.
Embittered and disillusioned by the lack of interest from aviation companies, Pearse became increasingly paranoid and was admitted in June 1951 to Sunnyside Mental Hospital. There he died on 29 July 1953 following a heart attack. He had never married.
Other (unpatented) inventions by Pearse included a needle threader, power cycle, recording machine, magic viewer, harp, power generator, potato planter, topdresser, motorised discing machine, and two sorts of musical box. His Utility Plane is held at the Museum of Transport and Technology, Auckland, and remnants of his first monoplane are held there and at the Timaru museum.
Richard Pearse died in obscurity. His secretive and solitary manner of working resulted in his genius being unrecognised in his own lifetime, and he had no influence whatever upon the course of aviation history. Unfortunately, his posthumous reputation as a visionary inventor has been clouded by a fruitless controversy as to whether or not he flew before the Wright brothers' fully attested flights. Pearse should be remembered as an inventor of extraordinary imagination and foresight whose vision far outreached the capacity of his simple workshop technology. He was nevertheless by a wide margin (whether in 1902, 1903 or 1904) the first British subject to achieve a powered take-off in a heavier-than-air machine of his own design and construction.
https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3p19/pearse-richard-william
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" PriceSGT Jim Arnold Maj Robert Thornton SPC Douglas Bolton Cynthia Croft SSgt Boyd Herrst TSgt Joe C. SGT John " Mac " McConnell SP5 Mark Kuzinski CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSG William Jones PO3 Craig Phillips PVT Mark Zehner
Richard William Pearse was born on 3 December 1877 at Waitohi Flat, Temuka, New Zealand, the fourth of nine children of Sarah Ann Brown and her husband, Digory Sargent Pearse, a farmer. Their property, Trewarlet, was 5 miles inland from Temuka. They were a cultured family with their own orchestra; Richard played the cello.
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TSgt Joe C. PO3 Steven Sherrill CW3 Kevin Storm SSG (Join to see) SGM Steve Wettstein SMSgt Thor Merich MSG (Join to see) PO1 John Johnson MAJ Ken Landgren LTC Greg Henning PVT Mark Zehner MSG Tom Earley Alan K. SPC Mark Huddleston PO1 H Gene Lawrence SGT Elizabeth Scheck Sgt Deborah Cornatzer SSgt Boyd Herrst SPC Diana D. SFC George Smith
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Love these stories of pioneers of aviation!!! Brave men in frail machines.
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