Off the Ground - 1, The First to Fly

One of the most daring balloonists — who broke innumerable bones in forced landings and parachute jumps — was Captain Noah Jonassen, who styled himself as ‘The Aerial King’. Clad in circus tights, these performers thrilled the crowds as they swung on trapezes or leapt in parachutes from their drifting dreadnoughts.

– Peter Clements

The early fliers had no one to train them, nobody had been in the air before.

– Peter Clements

One wonders what Pearse might have achieved had he lived closer to civilisation and the available technology of the time, instead of working away in a rural backwater and then later in Christchurch in a small and isolated country. Unfortunately the world of aviation overtook him. He worked for years, in secret, on this amazing later machine …

– Peter Clements