> Thirty years ago, my wife and I were given an all-expense paid, three-week
> tour of the DSIR and CSIRO scientific laboratories of New Zealand and
> Australia, primarily in Aukland, Wellington, Christchurch, Sydney,
Wollongong
> and most especially, Canberra. As a part of that tour, on our own time, we
> went to every museum we could find, and that bit of exploration paid off
in
> spades. In a very small red brick museum, off in corner of Aukland, we
> stumbled on Pearse's first aircraft and were amazed.
>
> A significant number of people now put his first flights very near the
same
> time as the Wright Brothers, and possibly even before. The documentation
for
> those claims is simply not good enough to be absolutely sure, but there's
no
> doubt that he was very close.

A little bit closer to our field, Alexander Graham Bell beat Elisha Gray to
the patent office by only 20 milutes and got the Telephone patent. Gray's
company still exists today as Graybar Electric.

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