French guy - what do you mean French guy? - a New Zealander first invented the aeroplane before the Wright brothers!

Richard William Pearse (3 December 1877 – 29 July 1953) was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering aviation experiments. Witnesses interviewed many years afterward claimed that Pearse flew and landed a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, nine months before the Wright brothers flew. Documentary evidence for these claims remains open to interpretation and dispute, and Pearse himself never made such claims. In a newspaper interview in 1909, he said he did not "attempt anything practical ... until 1904".

Biographer Gordon Ogilvie credits Pearse with "several far-sighted concepts: a monoplane configuration, wing flaps and rear elevator, tricycle undercarriage with steerable nosewheel, and a propeller with variable-pitch blades.

Pearse ended his flying experiments about 1911, but continued aviation work, attempting to develop a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and rotorcraft. Late in life he became bitter and paranoid and was admitted to a mental hospital in 1951, where he remained until his death.