Richard Pearse and a Claim to the World’s First Powered Flight

Photo of Richard Pearse’s Monoplane design from 1902-1903. He allegedly made a successful flight with this design on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright Brothers achieved the same feat.

Pictured above is a photograph of a monoplane designed and built by Richard Pearse in 1903. Pearse was a farmer who had an interest in engineering, flight and flying machines. He had previously designed bicycles and engines, but in the early 1900s he was working on a design for a flying machine. It was a monoplane with a front-mounted propeller and a large wing constructed of a bamboo frame and canvas.

Pearse worked out of a workshop on his farmland. From here, he conducted flight experiments from 1902 to 1911. During this time, he developed multiple flying machine prototypes which were all a variation of the design pictured above. He also patented the design, which was approved in 1906. A picture from this patent is below.

No evidence exists that Pearse’s monoplane ever successfully flew. However, in the 1980s a group of researchers located over fifty surviving witnesses who claimed, to varying degrees, that Pearse did indeed achieve powered flight.[1] The dates of the alleged flight vary, but most accounts put them in 1902 and 1903, which is before the Wright Brothers first flew the Wright Flyer. If this is true, it would mean Pearse, and not the Wright Brothers, was the world’s first person to achieve powered flight.

Patent drawing for Richard Pearse’s Monoplane from 1902, as New Zealand patent number #21476.

In Pearse’s own words, however, he gave credit to the Wright Brothers. Here’s a passage from a letter he wrote to a local newspaper in 1915:

The honor of inventing the aeroplane cannot be assigned wholly to one man; like most other inventions, it is the product of many minds. After all, there is nothing that succeeds like success, and for this reason pre-eminence will undoubtedly be given to the Wright Brothers, of America, when the history of the aeroplane is written, as they were the first to actually make successful flights with a motor-driven aeroplane. At most America can only claim to have originated the aeroplane. The honor of perfecting it and placing it on its present footing belongs to France.[2]

So, according to the man himself, he wasn’t the first to achieve flight. In any case, Pearse still contributed an interesting prototype to the history of flight and flying machines, even if his accomplishments have been inflated over the years.

Read more about other ideas for flying machines here.


[1] : Rodliffe, C.G.. Wings Over Waitohi: The Story of Richard Pearse. New Zealand: C.G. Rodliffe, 1997.

[2]: Pearse, Richard. “Who Invented the Aeroplane?” The Star (Christchurch, New Zealand), May 10, 1915.