Early Flight At Temuka In Home-Made Aeroplane

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27393, 5 July 1954, Page 10

Early Flight At Temuka In Home-Made Aeroplane

On December 17. 1903, Orville Wright, stretched out on the lower wing of the “Flyer” he and his brother had Duilt, took off and flew for 12 dizzy and epoch-making seconds—a distance of perhaps 180 yards. This is regarded as the first flight in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward -without reduction of speed, and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it started. But it may well be that by this definition a New Zealander flew as early as the Wright brothers. Mr Warne Pearse, of Timaru, recalled yesterday the day “late in 1903” when he swung the propeller on a machine: built by his brother, the late Mr R. W. Pearse, and watched it take off along the road beside the Upper Waitohi school, about eight miles from Temuka. This first flight was of some 60 yards, and ended with the undercarriage of the machine lodged in a 12ft gorse hedge on the side of the road.

Interest in the early attempts at aviation by Mr R. W. Pearse was raised recently when the Canterbury Aero Club was given possession of a type of helicopter he built after the First World War. This machine contained several novel features, but according to aero club members they all seem quite workable, and there is no doubt that in some aspects of aircraft design Mr Pearse was a long way ahead of his contemporaries. Mr Warne Pearse told a reporter from "The Press” yesterday that his brother was known in the Waitohi Flat district as Dick (“Aeroplane”) Pearse. Mr Pearse said his brother, at the age of about 11, became very interested in mechanical things, and took every opportunity of reading whatever literature he could find on machinery. When he was 21. Mr Dick Pearse was settled, like his brothers, on a farm at Waitohi Flat, and it was quite usual to find him driving his team of horses in the plough, with the reins around his neck while he walked behind and read some work on engineering. Offer of £lO,OOO Prize - was 311 offer of a prize of £lO.OOO to the first man who could build a plane to fly—l think the distance was three miles,” said Mr Pearse. ‘‘This was what interested Dick in trying to build a flying machine. He started work at the beginning of 1900, three years before the Wright brothers flew successfully.” Working his farm, Dick Pearse had no machinery, and no backing for his project, Mr Pearse said, but he was a most determined man. He designed a monoplane, and started work on building it “You can imagine the comments,” Mr Pearse said. “They said that if the best brains in the world could not build a plane to fly, what chance had he with very little capital and no facilities.” Dick Pearse’s first job was to make himself a lathe, said Mr Pearse. He had to mane his own forge and belu W i S ’ h e erected a sketchy sort of shelter to house the machine while it was under construction. He built a 2? P-P. engine weighing only 501 b, and claimed it was the lightest engine in the world for its strength. His monoplane, fitted with elliptical wings, had a spread of 45 feet and was about the same length from nose to tail. The framework was of bamboo, with alimicium joints for lightness. The propeller, finished with the glass of a broken bottle and sandpaper, -was Bft long, and beautifully made. The inventors troubles did not end there. He ■ ♦u th® wheels and the spokes m them for the undercarriage and cut down tyres and tubes to fit them.

Road Used as Runway The only runway was a stretch of metalled road near the school, and it was only 66ft wide, with the hedges thrusting into the road from either side said Mr Pearse. After 18 months’ work—m about June, 1901, the monoplane was ready for its first trial, and yas easily wheeled out on to the road by the brothers. It was found, however, that the motor was not strong enough to lift such a wingspread. Dick Pearse then set to work to build a 90 horsepower motor, and although it took him until late in 1903, the engine was a great success. ‘"Tke bU day cam e when he had fitted the 90 horsepower engine to the plane,said Mr Pearse. “I had the pleasure of pulling the propeller for storting. She was a wonderful engine, and started with very little bother. His first trial finished when the undercarriage caught in the top of the gorse hedge on one side of the road, and that meant weeks of delay for repairs.” By the end of the year, however, Dick Pearse had got up into the air on several occasions, said Mr Pearse.

He again swung to the left and landed on the hedge, but he first attained distances of 50 and 60 yards, and on each occasion showed an improvement in control. After further weeks of repairs he then decided to try -to take off in a paddock instead of the road, because there was a slight bank over which he hoped to take off. However, there was a mishap with a flywheel, which flew off and cut a swathe 45 feet through standing wheat—which helps Mr Pearse to place the incident as having occurred about February, 1904.

“The undercarriage seemed to get him into trouble.” said Mr Pearse. “Perhaps he tried to rise too soon—there was no experience on which he could draw, no instruction he could receive.” It was a “sad awakening” when Dick Pearse learned that the Wrights had flown, said Mr Pearse. He thought that the news had been read in the “Scientific American,” a leading technical journal of the day, and Mr Pearse does not recall that the news created much of a sensation in New Zealand, or was even printed at the time. Dick Pearse had, he said, patented a wing-tip and tail control in Australia and New Zealand, and he had then read in the magazine that the first such patent was attributed to the Wright brothers. After Dick Pearse had sent a copy of the patent rights, the magazine acknowledged that his was the first such patent.

Mr Pearse has a lively recollection of the distance his hat was blown when he got into the slipstream of his brother’s plane for the first time. When the plane was built his brother was 26.

Mr Pearse said he was the only person present when his brother first flew, and unfortunately photography as it is known today was in its infancy, and was restricted in the main to family group subjects. There was only one family, the Connells, living near at the time; Dick Connell, one of the boys in the family, later became a noted racing cyclist. People in the district were so certain Dick Pearse would fail that they were not very “worked up” about it, said Mr Pearse. Dick Pearse had said nothing about the fact that he had managed to fly, because he wanted to make the job a complete success first. Had he flown 10 or 12 miles he would never have said a word about it. Plane Left in Shed

e machine was left in the shed when Dick Pearse sold the farm and went to Milton in 1910, said Mr Pearse, although he took the engine with him. The new farmer took the iron off the shed to cover his grain, and the monoplane was left to the weather. For years after that, persons visiting the district used to gather small remnants of the machine.

Mr Pearse thought that the machine found in Christchurch had been built because Dick Pearse’s interest in aviation had been rekindled during his First World War service in England yd France. This machine was built at Woo Ist on, behind high protective fences to keep the work put of sight. There was nothing in the newspapers about that plane or the earlier one, for Mr Pearse said that “unless you wrote something from a country district, nothing ever got in about it.” Dick Pearse’s activities were not all aeronautical. In 1910, he had a small motor to send him scudding over the hills of Timaru on his bicycle—a long time before the present vogue began. He was interested in eliminating the loss of work in cycling when the pedals were directly up and down, and produced flat board treadles with cables. More than 40 years ago, he had a four-gear bicycle for the hill work, and he was not satisfied with the round cylinder and earphone type of gramophone of the day. He made a flat disc, and the recording could be Heard a quarter of a mile away. Perhaps the most intriguing of his gadgets was based on a huge clock spring and some lengths of barbed wire; by attaching a series of guitar strings, he made the barbs press on a cylinder which revolved at the instance of the clock spring. A tune could be played on to the cylinder, and then played back any number of times, the barbs picking the correct strings of the guitar in order. Dick Pearse had only one other real interest apart from machinery. Like the rest of the family, he had a love of music—his paternal grandmother was a Sargent, whose descendants include Sir Malcolm Sargent—and he played the ’cello in a family orchestra which also included five violins, a piano, and a harp.