Richard Pearse
Richard William Pearse was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterwards describe observing Pearse flying and landing a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew. Ambiguous statements made by Pearse himself make it difficult to date the aviation experiments with certainty. In a newspaper interview in 1909, with respect to inventing a flying machine, he said "I did not attempt anything practical with the idea until 1904".
Biographer Gordon Ogilvie credits Pearse with "several far-sighted concepts: a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades."
Pearse largely ended his early flying experiments about 1911 but pioneered novel aircraft and aero-engine invention from 1933 with the development of his "private plane for the million", a foldable single-engined tiltrotor convertiplane.
Early life
Richard William Pearse, born at Waitohi Flat, South Canterbury, New Zealand, on 3 December 1877, was the fourth of nine children of Digory Sargent Pearse of South Petherwin, Cornwall, England, and Sarah Anne Brown of County Londonderry, Ireland. Digory had migrated to New Zealand via South Australia in 1864–1865 and had taken up farming at Upper Waitohi, near Temuka. There he met and married Sarah, who had come to New Zealand to be with her sister at Temuka in about 1867.Digory and Sarah taught each of their children to play a musical instrument and formed a family orchestra. Richard played the cello, which he always kept close to hand. The family were also good tennis players; his brother Warne competing in New Zealand championships for some 25 years.
Richard Pearse attended the Waitohi Flat School from 1883 and Upper Waitohi School from 1891 to 1893, where, deep in thought at times and as a keen reader, he pursued an interest in technology. Peter Friel, a classmate at Upper Waitohi School, told researchers that Pearse came to school one morning with a device he had made from a herring in tomato sauce tin cut to form a multi-blade rotor, mounted to a cotton reel base—a string-pull helicopter. Seated on its launcher's peg and placed on a bench, he wound string around the reel and pulled away, whereupon the reel-rotor flew off and out of sight. Friel continued, "That’s how he got the start of that flying business!" Pearse revealed to the Timaru Post in 1909 that: "From the time I was quite a little chap, I had a great fancy for engineering, and when I was still quite a young man, I conceived the idea of inventing a flying machine."
His father's investment in eldest son Thomas's medical degree at Edinburgh put aside any thought of support for Richard's aspiration to study engineering at Canterbury College in Christchurch. Instead, at age 21 in 1898, his father set him up with the use of 100 acres of Waitohi farmland, upon which, over the next 13 years, he established a workshop, realised his ideas for bicycles, aero engines, flying machines and other contraptions, and kept some 76–286 sheep.
Career
Early engineering work
A hint of Pearse's earliest flying machine work at Waitohi, South Canterbury, came from Jean Currie, in her 20s at the time. When interviewed by researchers Tom Bradley and Geoff Rodliffe she recalled that quite some time before her family moved from Waitohi Flat to Morven in 1899, her father, Thomas Currie, farmer, and uncle, Alexander McClintock, blacksmith, had walked up to Pearse's workshop one Sunday only to return soon after, saying: "If he gets that contraption in the air he will fall out and kill himself." Though others spoke of Pearse working on his plane at the turn of the century or during the Boer War, Currie's account is dateable by Thomas Currie's acquisition of land in the Waikakahi Estate ballot of March 1899 and the family's departure from Waitohi.As no light suitably powered engines could be purchased at that time, many pioneering inventors made their own. In 1951, Pearse, then 73 years old, told Dr. J R Gilmour during an examination for aged care, that he had made an engine away back "during the Boer War". This could be anytime between 1899 and 1902. In that period, the only person available to Pearse, with knowledge of building hydrocarbon engines, was Cecil Wood of Timaru, who, from the mid-1890s, had pioneered New Zealand built internal combustion engines, motorcars and motorcycles. In later years, Wood told George Bolt and Harold Cederman that Pearse had visited him "in 1901 and 1902, and was shown how to make spark plugs with the central electrode insulated by mica. Wood also helped him with the design of surface carburettors."
The earliest technical description of his two-cylinder horizontally-opposed double-acting four-stroke "oil engine", was published in the 19 July 1906 provisional specification of Pearse's patent application, An Improved Aerial or Flying Machine, and indicated in Figure 1 of the 1907 complete specification; its existence confirmed by the recovery of two 4 inch bore x 12 inch cast iron cylinder relics in 1971. The two pistons were connected by a single piston rod, with the crank-arm and crank mechanism, turning the propeller shaft, mounted about the centre. Calculations indicate the engine could have produced as much as ; "quite enough power to get a plane off the ground. The Wright brothers, after all, managed their 1903 flights on 12 hp."
Crudely built, this engine appears to be Pearse's earliest, preceding his light four-cylinder horizontally-opposed single-acting four-stroke engine which features in a 1909 Temuka Leader article. Pearse informed the Minister of Defence in May 1945, he had started to work on this engine from about February 1904, a few months after Samuel Langley's aeroplane failed to fly. He referred to the 25 hp engine as an "aeroplane motor", his "first motor" and the "first single-acting 4 cylinder motor".
At some point Pearse mounted the earlier two-cylinder engine within the flying machine—a tricycle undercarriage surmounted by a fabric-covered bamboo wing structure. In general layout the machine resembled modern aircraft design: monoplane rather than biplane; tractor rather than pusher propeller. Witnesses tended to agree that the flying machine had no tail section.
Pearse's interest in engineering was not confined to aviation. In 1902, at Waitohi, Pearse invented a novel bell-crank pedal lever type bicycle with self-inflating tyres. Messrs. Martin and Co. of Christchurch built the bicycle, and Pearse made key components himself. Traveling up to Christchurch, he filed a patent application for the invention, via his newly appointed patent agent Henry Hughes, with the Christchurch Patent Office on 8 February 1902 —his first patent. Coincidentally, on the day the Patent Office issued Letters Patent, Pearse's bicycle drew public attention when he rode it in to Temuka on Sale Day, Tuesday, 19 May 1903, and Timaru on Wednesday, 20 May 1903.
Flights
Researchers into Pearse's aeronautical work had located some 55 surviving witnesses by the 1980s. They assigning a principal category to each witness at that time: 20 had seen a flight or more, 9 had seen a plane on a hedge or in the workshop awaiting repairs, 2 had heard the plane in flight but did not see it, 7 had a second hand account of seeing flight, 10 knew of flights and 7 had seen or knew of the flying machine under construction.Some witness accounts suggest Pearse flew in 1902; others indicate a series of flights in 1903, ending in winter that year. Some dateable events recalled as occurring about the time of the flights were: immediately after excessive flooding of the Ōpihi River on 23–24 March 1902; on 31 March, preceding April Fools' Day; within a year of the end of the Second Boer War and following the disbanding of the 9th Contingent, New Zealand Mounted Rifles, South Island Regiment, in New Zealand on 21 August 1902; about the time of Eugen Sandow's visit to Timaru, 26–29 December 1902; during Honora Crowley's last teaching year at Upper Waitohi School to September 1903; and before the Big Snow snowstorm from 11 July 1903. Following decades of research to establish dates, 31 March 1903 is noted by historians as the day when Pearse may have achieved some sort of witnessed flight.
1903 March 31: Upper Waitohi School take off, Main Waitohi Road
With the help of Pearse's brother Warne, the aeroplane was pushed 800 metres up the gravel road to the Upper Waitohi School crossroads, where two dozen spectators gathered to watch the fun. During several attempts to get the machine to work, the crowd dwindled to a handful of people. On the final effort Richard signalled to Warne to pull the propeller to start the engine, while boulders placed in front of the wheels, and volunteers, restrained the plane. After a short time the engine picked up speed. The boulders were then released, and the aircraft was given a push by volunteers.The Plane taxied for a considerable distance, keeping to the centre of the road. Pearse then accelerated, and the machine rose sluggishly into the air, sounding ’rather like a chaffcutter’. It was travelling at an estimated 30km/h, with a peak altitude exceeding 3 metres. Decades later witnesses provided affidavits describing the plane pitching and wobbling in the air, followed by a final leftward swerve onto the top of a four metre high gorse fence which fronted Pearse's property. Estimates for the distance covered by witnesses vary from 45 metres to 400 metres, with an average of 135 metres. Richard hurt his shoulder during the crash. He was taken to hospital to see if he had broken his collar bone, but it was not, and he returned home the next day. The hospital later burnt down along with the records.
The following day, witnesses describe telling other people of the ‘flight’ and being accused of making an April fool's joke, thus, the date of the event was the 31st of March. One group of witnesses were school students, who had this discussion while riding their ponies to school. Three of these students stopped attending School in the months leading up to April 1903. Another group who watched the event from high ground were William Charles Bedford, his wife Mary, and her sister-in-law Mrs. Louise Johnson. William Bedford sold his farm in Waitohi in December 1903, and went to live in Apsley, Darfield, where he resided for the rest of his life. Mrs. Louise Johnson was one of the most alert witnesses with respect to how the plane behaved in the air. She recollected to interviewer George Bolt that the take off occurred long before she moved away from Waitohi in May 1904. With this and other evidence, Pearse historians generally agree that this take off likely occurred on 31 March 1903, with a less likely year of 1902, and could not have occurred in 1904. This is the only flight experiment witnessed by multiple people.
Preceding the Wright brothers powered flights, this was one of two aircraft which achieved a successful flight attempt, from level ground without the use of ramps, slopes, guiderails, or catapults. The other was Clément Ader of France, who in 1890 is given credit by aviation historians for achieving a flight distance of approximately 50 metres at an altitude of 20 centimetres.