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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on Jun 18, 2014 21:57:42 GMT 12
Oh, it's Te Rauparaha. I'd also like to add Te Kooti; a man whose notoriety was country wide during his brush with history. My late Dad's grandmother (full-blooded Maori) was one of Te Rauparaha's many great granddaughters (which means I am a direct descendent of Te Rauparaha). And I've just finished reading Judith Binney's epic 1995 book, “ Redemption Songs: A life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki”.
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Post by komata on Jun 19, 2014 7:58:11 GMT 12
Ultimately, in light of these comments, and to return to Dave's 'tongue in cheek' suggestion that Pearse was NZ's first 'celebrity', that the answer must be that he wasn't.
I believe however that it can be fairly stated that he was certainly very clever (although I would be careful about using the word 'genius' to describe his abilities), and in some respects was ahead of his time in certain aspects of aircraft design. The ideas were there, the ability (perhaps even the inclination)to develop and apply them for 'commercial gain' wasn't.
One must wonder what would have eventuated had they been available.
An interesting person; shame about the controversy.
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Post by nuuumannn on Jun 19, 2014 12:50:49 GMT 12
Unfortunately, Pearse was one person working on his own without recourse to a second opinion. He tended to get bogged down in his own ideas and couldn't see his way round the essential problem of how to control the thing in flight. He approached it from the wrong direction, building an aeroplane first, then learning how to control and fly it, unlike the Wrights, who did the opposite - and of course there were two of them to bounce ideas between them. Before constructing their first powered aeroplane they spent hours learning to fly gliders, each more sophisticated than before until in their 1902 glider, through trial and error they got to the very first fully controllable heavier-than-aircraft about all three axes of movement. This took place over a period of nearly four years in which they carried out research into aerofoil shapes and control methods in the workshop, as well as practical experiments in flight, all before they had built their first powered aeroplane. And for the benefit of history and good old research, they documented everything.
This is what makes the claims of successful powered flight before them unrealistic. No research, no follow up. If someone did build a successful powered flying machine, like, let's say Gustave Whitehead, who has been getting a bit of mileage in the aviation rumour mill recently, why did he not continue after his initial successes and what happened to all that data? Surely if you build and test a device successfully like an aeroplane, the next step would be to promote the thing and attempt to market it to the world? Between the end of 1903 and the end of 1905, the Wrights spent 109 hours in the air flying three different aeroplanes, including the 1905 Flyer, the first practical aeroplane that could carry a load greater than just its pilot - and this was almost a full year before the first recorded successful heavier-than-air powered flight of an aeroplane in Europe, Alberto Santos Dumont's ungainly 14bis that could only fly in a straight line anyway.
By the time the Wrights gave their first official public demonstrations - people had gone down to Huffman Prairie near Dayton to watch them fly - in France in 1908, Wilbur stunned the world with the grace and controllability he demonstrated. On 8 August at a racecourse near Le Mans, to a large crowd of observers, which included Louis Bleriot and other members of the French aviation aristocracy, Wilbur took off in the 1907 Flyer, a repeat of the 1905 machine and did one circuit before returning to land. People went crazy and Bleriot, in Wilbur's words was struck speechless. He is famously remembered for quoting "to hell with the aileron" and deciding to use wing warping from then on, which he did, of course. The thing with aircraft in France and elsewhere was that they did not have a successful means of controlling an aeroplane about the longitudinal axis; they used rudder only in a turn, which meant they clumsily side slipped around, rather than banked and turned as we know the manoeuvre today. Aeroplanes without lateral control surfaces were built with exaggerated dihedral on their main wings and were known as 'Total Stability Types', meaning they could right themselves naturally if a condition of roll or yaw was induced, although ailerons had been invented and applied by Frenchman Robert Esnault-Pelterie - one of the great but sadly rather forgotten aviation pioneers, by then.
Bearing this in mind, watching Wilbur turn and bank his aeroplane came as quite a shock to everyone present, especially since the French believed they were more advanced in their aeronautical progress and went along just to poo poo the American and his claims of powered flight in 1903.
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Post by komata on Jun 19, 2014 14:03:21 GMT 12
nuummann
I totally agree; French national pride took a hammering as a result of the Wrights.
Ailerons: Didn't Pearse have some dispute with Glenn Curtis about about these, and a court case resulted?
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Post by errolmartyn on Jun 19, 2014 15:57:50 GMT 12
Ailerons: Didn't Pearse have some dispute with Glenn Curtis about about these, and a court case resulted? Not Pearse but the Wrights. Errol
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Post by nuuumannn on Jun 19, 2014 17:03:59 GMT 12
It wasn't so much the use of control surfaces on aeroplanes, or airplanes, but what Curtiss was using his aeroplanes for - exhibition flying. The Wrights weren't against others using the idea of a three axis control system, but the patent infringement by Curtiss - and British aviator Claude Grahame White as well, was the use of aeroplanes unsing the controls for exhibition and display purposes without consulting the Wrights, primarily because the Wrights wished to market the concept and sell it themselves. This is what the infringement was about. The Wrights were brilliant scientists and engineers, but not very good businessmen.
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Post by komata on Jun 19, 2014 17:13:38 GMT 12
Thank you gentlemen; much appreciated.
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Post by nuuumannn on Jun 20, 2014 14:39:09 GMT 12
You're welcome, Komata. Curtiss was rather devious in his treatment of the Wrights and as a result of his actions in publicly discrediting them caused an acrimonious relationship between the Wrights and the US public for years afterwards. Very shameful and despicable behaviour by Mr Curtiss.
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Post by errolmartyn on Apr 29, 2015 17:03:56 GMT 12
The following appeared in the Listener of 28 February 2015.
Books & Culture Secrets to creative success
Technology entrepreneur Kevin Ashton has written an account of creativity that demolishes the notion of genius, epiphanies and the value of praise. He talked to Mark Broatch.
. . . New Zealander Richard Pearse apparently flew around the same time as the Wright brothers - they followed a series of steps from cycle to glider to plane. You say such simultaneous creation is common.
Incredibly common. If you think about creating as a lightning bolt of inspiration, then it seems a remarkable coincidence that people invent the same thing at the same time. But if you think about it as a series of steps, it's not surprising at all that things get invented simultaneously with incredible regularity, because there are people all over the world looking at the same problem and trying out the same solutions.
The interesting thing about the Wright brothers is there were lots of people trying to fly and failing who started trying before them. The question I wanted to ask was: why were they the ones to succeed? The way they defined the problem they were trying to solve was very different, because they had a lot of experience building bicycles, which was a new technology. And they understood that the problem of bicycle building was balance. The problem of flying therefore to them was not so much about getting into the air but staying there, which requires control and balance. It's about understanding what your problem is. I'm fairly sure if I look at Pearse's story what I'll probably see is that he came to similar conclusions and had similar insights and that's why he was successful. ----------------------------------------
The following letter to the editor by yours truly in response to the above did not appear in the Listener! Printed here with the above for the (corrected) record.
Mark Broatach (28 February) is in error in stating that ‘Richard Pearse apparently flew around the same time as the Wright brothers’, as is his interviewee Kevin Ashton’s assertion that he (Pearse) ‘was successful’.
When Pearse was interviewed by the Timaru Post on 16 November 1909 he stated that he had done ‘nothing practical, until in 1904’ (ie, a year after the Wrights first powered flights). As described in my A Passion For Flight, at the time of the Post interview Pearse had only just begun flight tests of his first aeroplane, but apart from some low-level hops successful flight eluded him.
Errol
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Post by Dave Homewood on Apr 29, 2015 22:18:47 GMT 12
Well technically the article is correct because the Wright brothers were still flying all that time later when Pearse first had a go. It doesn't say when the Wrights 'first' flew. Just winding you up Errol, haha.
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Post by nuuumannn on Apr 30, 2015 15:18:18 GMT 12
Having done some research into an early aviation pioneer wrongly afflicted with the same disease, Scottish aviator Preston Watson, I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how much effort people put into establishing facts and placing something like this into perspective, it makes not a damn bit of difference to some once the precedent is set. This is evidence of that. Last year, the Dundee Museum had a book launch trumpeting Preston Watson's achievements as the 'first true aviator' as put on Wikipedia and that he flew a powered aeroplane in 1903, this is after the original claimant who publicly stated it first, Watson's younger brother James had denied the whole thing back in the 1960s! I pointed out in an article I had published (in Pacific Wings) a few years back that Watson couldn't have been first if the Pearse supporters are to be believed at any rate!
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Post by errolmartyn on May 20, 2016 15:40:55 GMT 12
KIWI FLYERMAGAZINE MYTHINFORMED ABOUT RICHARD PEARSE’S FIRST AEROPLANE!
Informed readers will be highly amused to see two photographs of Ivan Mudrovich’s machine appearing in issue 39 of Kiwi Flyernonsensically captioned as ‘This totally authentic . . . replica of Richard Pearse’s aircraft’.
Anyone who has done even a modest amount of checking is aware that it is impossible to create a replica of Pearse’s first aeroplane, for the simple reason that there are no known photographs, plans or detailed specification upon which to base such a creation.
In November 1909 Pearse’s aeroplane, which was only then beginning its first trials, was inspected by Sam Carter, a long-serving locomotive engineer and New Zealand railways foreman at Oamaru. A report of his visit was published in the Otago Witness of 1 December. In his account he was quite clear that, contrary to the Mudrovich machine, Pearse’s possessed an ‘oval shaped’ wing with ‘no camber’ (and no suggestion of aerofoil or ‘arch’ shape). Some others who saw Pearse’s machine at close quarters at the time recalled in later life that the wing was ‘egg-shaped’ or circular. Carter also noted that Pearse had already moved his elevator from the rear to the front, whereas the Mudrovich design has it still at the rear.
This information was conveyed to the magazine’s editor but, unlike others, he refuses to published letters for fear of creating debate. One wonders what part of the meaning of democracy he fails to understand! Errol
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Post by errolmartyn on May 20, 2016 16:12:42 GMT 12
KIWI FLYER MAGAZINE ARTICLE CONTINUES TO MYTHINFORM READERS ABOUT RICHARD PEARSE’S FIRST AEROPLANE!
This magazine continues to publish nonsensical statements about Richard Pearse’s first aeroplane, the latest in a poorly researched article in issue 45 by one Chris Gee who writes that ‘there is also evidence that he [Pearse] was actively trying [to fly] at about the same time [as the Wrights in 1903] . . .’ . Needless to say Gee fails to provide any of this so-called ‘evidence’. Further on are repeated, erroneous references to Pearse’s ‘1903 aircraft’ and even his ‘historic 1903 aircraft’.
He then goes on to assert that Ivan Mudrovich has ‘built his own full-scale interpretation of Pearse’s original 1903 design. Using only technology and techniques available to Richard Pearse at the time . . .’, which is a bit awkward considering that there is no evidence whatsoever that Pearse was actively designing anything in 1903, not only that but on 16 November 1909 Pearse himself stated categorically that he also had done ‘nothing practical’ until after 1903 (his patent did was not filed until 1906 and the drawings to accompany it a year later).
Further on Gee implies that the Mudrovich construction relied on, among other things, ‘blurry photographic records’. If this is taken to mean photographs then he is sadly mistaken as no such photographs are known to exist.
Richard Pearse was an interesting personality and his dogged attempts to build and fly a powered aircraft deserve to be recognised. Sadly, ill-informed and over-the-top articles like Gee’s simply serve to promote New Zealand as a laughing stock among aviation historians worldwide.
Errol
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Post by nuuumannn on May 23, 2016 3:37:48 GMT 12
And so it goes on... No end in sight, Errol.
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Post by errolmartyn on May 23, 2016 13:29:37 GMT 12
And so it goes on... No end in sight, Errol. Sadly no, Grant. I shall just have to continue repeating myself, repeating myself, re . . . Errol
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Post by nuuumannn on May 23, 2016 14:52:17 GMT 12
Well, Errol, everyone else does...
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Post by Dave Homewood on May 23, 2016 17:27:58 GMT 12
That's right. The myth continues because people keep repeating it, so we need to all keep repeating the story as it stands now with more research, and clearer thinking - ie the truth - till it drowns out the old myth.
You should come on the WONZ Show, Errol!!
(I even had to explain to Mum today that she had been misled over the years as she brought up the topic into our conversation of Richard Pearse possibly flying first...)
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Post by kiwithrottlejockey on May 25, 2016 11:05:27 GMT 12
Mind you, it is always good fun winding up Americans on American messageboard forums (non-aviation groups) by claiming that a NZer flew a powered fixed-wing aeroplane before an American did. They bite like big dogs, especially when one posts links to innacurate websites, such as the one hosted by Monash University in Australia to back up the bullshit. I admit to being guilty of doing that deliberately on a few occasions just to leg-pull Americans.
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Post by nuuumannn on May 25, 2016 14:43:38 GMT 12
You're so naughty! Brazilians get really passionate about Alberto Santos Dumont and believing the Wrights flew gliders until 1906, which was the year ASD 'flew' his awkward 14bis; an aeroplane so ridiculous it was a balloon basket fitted with wings and a fuselage, in which the pilot stood upright to fly it. Brazilians start foaming at the mouth about him.
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Post by ZacYates on May 25, 2016 16:18:52 GMT 12
The 14bis was only "flown" under the balloon as a form of testing "(i)n order to simulate flight conditions" ( see the Wikipedia "Operational History" here, link): the aircraft flew on its own in September and November 1906. I for one find the independently-configured, balloon-less 14bis to be quite attractive in a quirky way! I'm not a fan of recreational leg-pulling where important historical fact and education is concerned. I have enough to get on with and entertain myself in my life without "trolling"!
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