Richard Pearse

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the film director, see Richard Pearce (film director).
Richard Pearse
Enlarge
Richard Pearse

Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 — 29 July 1953), a farmer and inventor who emigrated from Cornwall to New Zealand, experimented with flying machines in the early 20th century. Following such aviation pioneers as Clement Ader and Samuel Pierpont Langley, he reputedly flew a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, some nine months before the Wright brothers. The documentary evidence to support such a claim remains open to interpretation, however, and he did not match the Wrights' achievement of photographing flights. Pearse later claimed his experiments were made in 1904 and were unsuccessful.

Pearse started farming on 100 acres (400,000 m²) in 1898 at Waitohi in South Canterbury, but he never became a keen farmer, having much more interest in engineering. He had wanted to study engineering at an advanced level, but his family did not have the money, having already sent his older brother, Tom, to medical school. Richard resorted to inventing instead.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early Work

In 1902 Pearse built and patented a bicycle with vertical crank gears and self-inflating tyres. He then designed and built a two-cylinder "oil engine" which he mounted on a tricycle undercarriage surmounted by a linen-covered bamboo wing-structure and rudimentary controls. Although it lacked an aerofoil section wing, his flying machine resembled modern aircraft design much more than did the Wright brothers' machine: monoplane rather than biplane, tractor rather than pusher propeller, stabiliser and elevators at the back rather than the front, and ailerons rather than wing-warping for controlling banking. It bore a remarkable resemblance to modern [microlight]] aircraft.

[edit] Flying?

Pearse made several attempts to fly in 1902 but due to insufficient engine power he achieved no more than brief hops. The following year, he redesigned the engine to incorporate double-ended cylinders with two pistons each. Researchers recovered components of his engine (including cylinders made from cast-iron drainpipes) Upper Waitohi from rubbish dumps in 1963. Replicas of the 1903 engine suggest that it could produce about 15 horsepower (11 kW).

Verifiable eyewitnesses describe his crashing into this hedge on two separate occasions during 1903. His monoplane must have risen to a height of at least 3 m on each occasion. There is good evidence that on 31 March 1903 Pearse achieved a powered, but uncontrolled flight of several hundred metres. [1], [2]. Pearse himself said that he had made a powered takeoff, "but at too low a speed for [his] controls to work". However, he remained airborne until he crashed into the hedge at the end of the field.

With a 15 horse power engine, the Pearse's design had adequate power-to-weight ratio to become airborne (even without an aerofoil). However it could not achieve controlled flight. Pearse incorporated effectively-located (albeit possibly rather small) "ailerons". The design's low centre-of-gravity provided pendulum stability. However, diagrams and eye-witness recollections agree that Pearse placed controls for pitch and yaw at the trailing edge of the low-aspect ratio kite-type permanently stalled wing. Located in turbulent air-flow, and close to the centre of gravity, they would have lacked adequate turning moment to control the pitch or yaw of the aircraft.

Pearse's work remained poorly documented at the time. No contemporary newspaper record exists. Some photographic records survived, but undated, with some images difficult to interpret. Pearse himself made contradictory statements which for many years led the few knew of his feats to accept 1904 as the date of flying. Unconcerned about posterity and in remote New Zealand, received no public credit for his work during his lifetime. The Wrights had considerable difficulty in getting their accomplishment recognised, despite better documentation and witnesses; a "Fliers or Liars?" debate continued for quite some time after Kitty Hawk, and it took highly public demonstrations before the Wright brothers gained wide recognition.Although Pearse patented his design, his innovations such as ailerons and the lightweight air-cooled engine did not influence others.

[edit] Later activities

Pearse moved to Milton in Otago in about 1911 and discontinued his flying experiments due to the hillier country there. Much of his experimental equipment got dumped in a farm rubbish-pit. However, he continued experimenting and produced a number of inventions. He subsequently moved to Christchurch in the 1920s, where he built three houses and lived off the rentals.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Pearse continued to work on constructing a tilt-rotor flying-machine for personal use — sometimes described as a cross between a windmill and a rubbish-cart. His design resembled an autogyro or helicopter, but involved a tilting propellor/rotor and monoplane wings. Pearse intended the vehicle for driving on the road (like a car) as well for flying. However he became reclusive and paranoid that foreign spies would discover his work. Committed to Sunnyside Mental Hospital in Christchurch in 1951, Pearse died there two years later. Researchers believe that many of his papers were destroyed at that time.

[edit] Analysis

On his death, the Public Trustee administered Pearse's estate. Fortunately for posterity, the trust officer given the task of disposing of his personal effects recognised the significance of his aeronautical achievements and brought them to wider attention. As a result, aviation pioneer George Bolt saw Pearse's last flying machine. In 1958 Bolt excavated the South Canterbury dump-site and discovered some components, including a propeller. His research in the 1960s (among eyewitnesses, most of them schoolchildren at the time of Pearse's early achievements) produced strong circumstantial evidence for flight in 1903: people who had left the district by 1904 remembered the events, and recalled a particularly harsh winter with heavy snow.

During filming of a television documentary in the 1970s, crew attached a replica of Pearse's 1902 machine by a rope to a team of horses. When the horses bolted, the machine took to the air and flew, indicating that the design could fly. Unfortunately, this did not get filmed, as the crew had packed away their cameras at the end of the day's shooting.

A memorial to Pearse's attempts at powered flight stands near Pleasant Point in South Canterbury.

The Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland displays a replica of Pearse's aircraft. For the centenary of Pearse's alleged flight, a replica motor was also made. The two combined successfully became airborne, albeit very briefly. Visitors to the museum can also see Pearse's last flying machine and the scant remains of his first aircraft.

[edit] Legacy

At the dawn of the 20th century, a number of enthusiasts in several countries advanced towards powered heavier-than-air flight - a fact easily overlooked due to the first practical controlled flights by the Wright brothers, who gained international fame during their public flight demonstrations of 1908. Pearse, as one of several pre-Wright designers, advanced some distance towards controlled flight. However, unlike many of these other pre-Wright aeronauts, Pearse had little influence on his successors, because details of his ideas and experiments went unpublished.

Pearse's designs and achievements remained virtually unknown beyond the few who witnessed them, and they had no impact on his contemporary aviation designers. However, his concepts had much in common with modern aircraft design, and others later implemented these concepts without knowing of Pearse's efforts. As a result some have described Pearse as a man ahead of his time. (So far ahead of his time, in fact, that the second New Zealand flight did not happen until 5 February 1910 when Vivian Walsh flew a plane he had built himself.)

Much controversy persists around the many competing claims of early aviators. See first flying machine for more discussion.

[edit] Pearse in the arts

Film and the stage have commemorated Richard Pearse's remarkable achievements over the years.

Two plays centred on Pearse: The Pain and the Passion, by Sherry Ede, and Too High the Sun, by Stephen Bain and France Hervé.

In the 1970s New Zealand's TV One produced a television movie about Pearse and his first flight. The film focused on Pearse's reclusive manner and his small town's perception of his eccentric activities.

In 1995 Forgotten Silver, a mockumentary by filmmakers Costa Botes and Peter Jackson, purported to uncover long-lost "evidence" proving Pearse's flight predated the Wrights'.

In 2006 New Zealand composer Ross Devereux made Pearse the subject of a two-act rock opera, entitled The Planemaker - A Richard Pearse Story.

[edit] Note and references

  1. ^ Rodliffe, Geoffrey (1993) Wings over Waitohi, Auckland.
  2. ^ Ogilvie, Gordon (1994). The Riddle of Richard Pearse, Revised edition, published by Reed Publishing, Auckland.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../r/i/c/Richard_Pearse_496e.html"
In other languages