Richard William Pearse - Genius
Richard William Pearse was born on December 3, 1877, in the small farming community of Waitohi, inland from Temuka. An apparently quiet, thoughtful lad, during his school years Richard exhibited none of the genius he was later to display, which would lead to his obsession with flying. Yet his family, who had emigrated from Cornwall, included many talented individuals stretching back over generations. Richard grew up in a family that excelled at music, tennis and chess. He was an avid reader and was even observed deeply engrossed in a book while ploughing, reins around his neck and the horse left to its own devices. He was characterised by many who knew him as ‘decidedly odd’. The locals recall him giving a dissertation on the foibles of magnetos at a Remembrance Day gathering just after the First World War. Yet it was his passion to fly a ‘heavier than air machine’ that showed the world what a true genius he was.
The 'number eight wire’ workshop
As can be imagined, Waitohi could not be considered the engineering capital of New Zealand, and yet with the help of a local blacksmith he managed to build two revolutionary aero engines. At the same time he solved flying control problems by inventing ‘ailerons’ which far exceeded the primitive ‘wing warping’ used by the Wright Brothers. His engines relied on a horizontally opposed configuration, which simply put meant that the actions of the pistons counterbalanced each other, dramatically reducing engine vibration. His second motor, a four-cylinder unit, achieved the remarkable power to weight ratio of five pounds per horsepower. Thus his engine developed 25 horsepower for a total weight of 125 pounds. Only Pearse and the Wright brothers built their own engines. All the other early aviators relied on commercially produced units.
Pearse’s first engine was a two-stroke, two cylinder unit that would have proven much easier to build than the later four-stroke unit of 1909. The problem was it didn’t produce sufficient power for sustained flight, although, according to Pearse, it produced about 90 pounds of thrust, which was exceptional for the time.
The ever-resourceful Pearse used the materials you would expect to find on a farm. His piston cylinders were cast iron water pipe, capped with a circular plate of iron welded to the top, through which a sparkplug was inserted. The connecting rods and pistons were also cast iron. I assume, by 1903, when his first flight is reckoned to have occurred, he may have used paraffin - mixed with locally produced whisky - as fuel, which would have worked in a two-stroke engine. The local blacksmith even managed to cast the crankshaft, which Pearse finished with a simple lathe he built himself. How he managed to build a set of exhaust valves that would survive the high temperatures of the combustion process is unknown. He may have been fortunate enough to obtain Ford Model ‘T’ valves and pistons, or their equivalent. The production of pistons and rings would certainly have been beyond the capability of his small workshop.
Unfortunately Pearse was his own worst enemy, in that he took inordinate trouble to avoid publicity about his flying exploits. He was so obsessively secretive that his own family knew little about his brilliant designs. Even his brother, Warne, who helped him prepare and launch the first powered flight in 1903, had little understanding of what Richard had achieved. It was fortunate that the late George Bolt, then working with what is now Air New Zealand, recognised Pearse’s work for what it was and set about rescuing that which could be salvaged, after Pearse died in Sunnyside Hospital on July 29, 1953, aged 76.
Pearse was a recluse by nature, living in Woolston, Christchurch, at the time of his committal to Sunnyside Hospital. His family had become increasingly concerned at what they believed to be his inability to fend for himself. In 1942 he had become a pensioner, yet still attempted to solve some of the more complex aerodynamic problems of modern flight - issues that required vast teams of aircraft engineers and millions of dollars.
Later aircraft engineers have claimed that Pearse simply didn’t have the capacity to discover the complex solutions required for modern flight. I emphatically disagree! Prior to 1906, Pearse invented the aileron which, although we take it for granted as part of every aircraft today, was a critical step forward in the safe control of aircraft. In doing so, the wing design and structural problems he was required to overcome could only be achieved by an inspired genius. His skill in mathematics must have been formidable; even a small mistake in his calculations could have resulted in a critically dangerous aircraft in flight. One of the difficulties in early aircraft design was they remained relatively stable until the pilot began to change direction. This altered a number of parameters, including the centre of gravity. In essence, the aircraft went from flying on a straight level flight path to an uncontrollable turning corkscrew, or worse!
The First Flight
Controversy still rages in aviation historical circles as to the exact date of Pearse’s first flight. The earliest possible date was March 31, 1903. There were a number of witnesses to this attempt, which took place along the Main Waitohi Road beginning at the intersection of Galbraith Road, outside Pearse’s farm gate, but the newspapers were deliberately not informed of the attempt. The tragedy was, no one bothered to record the time and date. The engine was run up to full throttle, some 800 revolutions per minute, while Warne Pearse, Richard’s brother, anchored the machine. Then with a wisp of dust the little machine slowly ran down the road, for what seemed an eternity to Richard, then at approximately 20 miles per hour climbed into the air between the hedgerows lining the road. Almost immediately, the machine swing off course and landed on top of the large gorse hedge at the boundary of the Pearse farm. What had happened? What went wrong?
Pearse knew instantly the engine, although producing some 90 pounds of thrust, had not managed to get the aircraft moving fast enough to make the control surfaces effective. He climbed down from the wreck, where it remained, rotting, for some months after. Yet he didn’t consider this to be ‘flight’. Pearse believe that the only true flight was over a reasonable distance, between two nominated points. He considered the short ‘hop’ of the Wright brothers did not constitute true controlled flight, just as he did not consider his 1903 ‘hop’ true flight either. Thus he made no claims to this effect.
A number of firsts
Although Pearse managed to fly only some 40 yards, by a consensus of those who observed the event he did take off, using a tricycle undercarriage arrangement of cycle wheels. The Wright Brothers had used a greased wooden rail, because their engine was unable to produce sufficient power to get them airborne. Pearse was able to take off from an unprepared dirt road, using wheels. This indicated he had a much more efficient aircraft than the Wright Brothers. Although Pearse’s machine became uncontrollable once airborne, a subsequent unmanned replica was accidentally towed into the air by a frightened horse during the making of a television documentary. It remained stable in flight until the horse swerved. This proved Pearce’s claim that the original machine had become uncontrollable, due to a lack of airspeed. It appears it was a one horsepower engine that was needed!
The 1903 aircraft used the world’s first ailerons to effect a turning and banking moment in flight. They were not as yet synchronised with the rudder, but Pearse quickly realised the benefit of doing so. More importantly, it changed the way in which wings could be constructed. Using ‘wing warping’ required the outer ends of the wing to be sufficiently flexible to allow for bending, yet strong enough not to collapse under load. Ailerons allowed wing tips to become rigid and of much heavier construction, ensuring the wing didn’t collapse under load, a common problem with wing warping.
But by 1906 Pearse had a problem. The American pioneer aviator, Curtis, had simultaneously produced a set of ailerons for his machine, which was promptly challenged by the Wright Brothers in court, where the judge determined the aileron was ‘too similar’ in concept to ‘wing warping’ for it not to be an infringement of the Wrights' copyright. The judge may have known something about horses, but had no idea about flight! This outrageous decision was to dissuade Pearse from proceeding with further aircraft design work until the 1930s because he could not afford to fight the Wright Brothers' patent claim. Had it not been for the First World War, matters may have remained this way.
Richard worked on many other projects, funded only by his meagre pension. Unfortunately, we will never know the true scope of later work, his papers being destroyed by Sunnyside Hospital staff as the ramblings of an ‘old man’. But there is one matter we can be sure of. He was an aviation pioneer of the highest calibre and as such is now rightly acknowledged as a New Zealand genius.