> 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.
They were very clever folks, for certain. And they were in the right place to get their invention “off the ground” as it were: South Canterbury in NZ’s South Island is about as deserted as it can get — aside from quite a few million sheep. One brilliant guy like Pearse, working alone, can get all kinds of wild things happening. Trouble is, finding anybody to tell about it!
What I found interesting was the differences between the Wright machine and the Pearse machine. Pearse used a propellor that pulled — the Wrights used a propellor that pushed. Pearse used a monoplane versus the Wright’s biplane. And if you look at Pearse’s machine today (or rather the replica as his original is in several bits at MOTAT) it resembles a modern ultra-lite more than anything...
Dunno if you’re ever likely to be in New Zealand: if you ever are I’d be happy to show you MOTAT and the Pearse plane. MOTAT is like a ten-year-old boy’s idea of what a museum should look like: lots of cool stuff in there “because it’s cool” and because it needs to be saved, with no other good reason necessary... and it’s right beside the Zoo, which makes it a great reason to go.
I appreciate your responses very much, and thanks for the offer. It seems G-d requires I get off my virtual ass and start earning the kind of dough needed to self-fund such a voyage, which I would like, but earning the dough? — that’s hard work.