First-Flight Claims Studied

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32037, 11 July 1969, Page 1

First-Flight Claims Studied

Judging the relative merits of who was the first person to make a controlled, sustained flight in New Zealand will not be easy, according to the New Zealand division of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

The job would need study of more than one organisation and as there is no suitable body in the Dominion to do this the division hopes to establish one. Mr A. A. Hoffman, the hon-

orary secretary of the New Zealand division of the society, said the subject was discussed at a meeting of the society’s council in Wellington on Tuesday. “The discussion arose after reports that Mr H. J. Pither had made such a flight at Riverton Beach near Invercargill in 1910. The first such flight has generally been considered as that by Vivian Walsh in 1911. In 1903 or 1904 Richard Pearse got off the ground near Timaru in a machine of his own design and construction,” he said. The New Zealand division of the society felt some re-

sponsibility for taking note of claims for such an important first and for seeing that efforts were made to preserve records of early aviation or study of

it in the Dominion. “However, there are many difficulties not only in collecting and assessing reliability of reports but also in determining whether true flight was achieved,” said Mr Hoffman.

The division was awaiting advice from the headquarters of the society in London and from other authorities such as the Smithsonian Institution in America, as to the definition of true powered flight.

E Without this definition the t relative merits of various s attempts could not be judged, s Mr Hoffman said that any f evidence on such historical

matters should be as reliable as possible so as to be clearly and widely acceptable. “For instance, eye-witness reports should at least be in the form of sworn affidavits and written or printed material should be contempor-

ary,” he said. He said that the division was taking steps to find a suitable secure repository for valuable early papers and other material found in the Dominion.