First "Flight" - Wright Brothers or KIWI Richard Pearse

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FrankPilot

SOH-CM-2022
The world's first becoming airborne in a heavier-than-air powered aircraft was not the Wright Brothers in December 1903 but probably New Zealander Richard Pearse some 8 or 9 months earlier. With further development the Wrights did then go to sustained, fully controlled flight in 1904/5. Come see how Pearse did it. Hope you enjoy. Cheers.

 
After reading the descriptions I could find, a lot of people who many years after the fact claimed they saw it back in the day, but no actual period documents recording it.
 
If Weisskopf had limited his claims to the type of feeble, uncontrolled lurch into the air in 1901 with the No.21 craft that is similar to what Pearse may have achieved, he still wouldn't have established primacy in controlled flight, but would at least be taken seriously as a good-faith actor. But, his outrageous and self-contradictory claims of success in 1902 with a No.22 craft that seems never to have existed, and his documented failure to have created anything airworthy post 1903, establish him as a fraud. His known dishonesty and the absence of any evidence beyond his own say-so and that of his associates defeat any presumption that No.21 ever left the ground at all, let alone in a way that would satisfy the definition of a controlled flight.

August
 
These debates remind me of the stories of other Europeans who discovered the Americas before Columbus. its been documented that the Vikings did come in contact with North American around 1000AD, but they did not leave any lasting settlements and did not widely publicize their discoveries, hence their discoveries did not change the world significantly.

There very well be others who achieved powered flight before the Wright brothers, there were defiantly more than a few that were trying, but they did not publicize it at the time, did not demonstrate that to a wide audience, they did not setup production of an aircraft that could be sold. The Wright brothers did something and shared it in a way that actually changed the world.
 
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