Hummph!®

Doesn't count, and you know it! Stringfellow's effort had strings attached, if you know what I mean.

Actually, Richard Pearse was a real clever sod, and the flying thingy was actually just a sideline. He built a bicycle which was years ahead of its time, he found a way of making traction engines much more efficient and came up with a whole host of other inventions.

But for all that he had absolutely no commercial nous (witness the fact that he flew his plane without publicity. But there is no doubt at all that he beat the Wright brothers to it by about nine months and possibly nearly 18 months.

He never took out a single patent. Idiot!

- Pfranz