A Taranaki Inventor

Clive Webby (1908-1961) was an inventor from Kaponga. In 1938, Clive was invited to America by the Daisy Manufacturing Company, an outdoor product company based in Michigan, to discuss his invention, a semi-automatic pneumatic air rifle. Over the next few years Clive, and his wife Mary, travelled twice to America to work on development of the rifle – but both times their trip was cut short because of World War Two.

After the war, Clive continued to expand on his ideas and got the air rifle closer to production. In 1961, on the night before a trip to Auckland to meet interested manufacturers and investors, Clive had a fatal heart attack. Without Clive's vision and skills, the whole project came to a halt.

This snapshot is one of many taken of Clive during the multiple stop-overs on the trip by boat to America. A collection of items belonging to Clive and Mary was donated to Puke Ariki in 2016, by their son Wayne Webby.