> Where the Wright Brothers influenced by Pearse?
I don’t know.
There are certain similarities between the Pearse craft and the Wright craft, and some important differences too.
What remains of the Pearse craft is at the Museum of Transportation, Science and Technology (MOTAT) in Auckland’s Western Springs. There’s also a full-size replica built from his drawings.
There are two MOTAT sites: MOTAT 2 has most of New Zealand’s historic aeroplanes in a couple large hangars — including a Lancaster Bomber, one of a very few left in the world. Pearse’s craft is in MOTAT 1, the main site, just down the road. Next door to the Auckland Zoo.
(MOTAT is a really interesting museum: it’s where New Zealand displays all of its really cool stuff that doesn’t get into the Auckland War Memorial Museum or into the national “Te Papa Museum of New Zealand” in Wellington. Imagine the Smithsonian Museums designed by ten year-old boys: that’s MOTAT. Lots of trains, lots of planes, lots of war stuff. Not much “interpretation” required.)
Well, the Wright’s were real students of the art at the time, and they and their sister and some companions did what appears to have been some serious paradigm shifting.
When the time is ripe for an invention you’ll find a number of simultaneous inventors. And always some precursors who may even have succeeded but the time and place wasn’t capable of accepting the invention.
The Wright’s were real innovators, not just about aeroplanes, but about the methodology of rapid invention.