Herbert John Pither was a professional cyclist, engine manufacturer and aviation experimenter. He grew up in Canterbury, New Zealand, where he became involved in cycling, both manufacture and racing. On retirement from the Australasian professional racing circuit, he set up business on his own account in Christchurch as an engineer, making first bicycles, then small engines, before moving to the Southland town of Invercargill about 1906. He reportedly drove south in an automobile of his own making. Once there, he set up an engineering shop, supposedly making small agricultural and boat engines under the brand 'Peerless', but scheming an aircraft. This must have taken up a great deal of his time and resources, contributing to his later financial difficulties. Pither solved the problem of making a craft light enough to stay in the air with the engine technology of the day by using bicycle steel tubing. He also built the engine. Pither flight-tested this craft at Oreti Beach for a week in mid-winter 1910.[1] (This was the western end of the beach off Bay Road, not the same location Burt Munro used for motorbike trials at a later date.)
Because there were no eye-witnesses, only a report by Pither to a friendly journalist several days later, there is no conclusive proof that he flew. However this self-report of a one-mile flight during a short weather window on 5 July has some convincing aspects, including the suggestion the novice pilot got a considerable scare from the unexpectedly different behaviour of the craft once airborne. In 2003, the Croydon Aircraft Company at Mandeville, near Gore, produced a replica of Pither's Bleriot-style monoplane, which microlight veteran Jerry Chisum flew. He declared the design controllable—just.
On 22 March 2010, it was announced that a replica of Pither's aircraft would be flown on 3 or 4 July to celebrate 100 years since the claimed date of Pither's flight.[2]
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Born in Reigate, Surrey, in 1871, Pither was the second eldest of 12 children of John and Lydia Pither, who emigrated to Canterbury on the Crusader in 1875. Pither and his Australian wife Sarah Hahir had no children, but there are many descendants in other lines. Information collected for this project, including photos and family legends, is being shared with far-flung branches of the family.