1903 in aviation
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This is a list of aviation-related events from 1903:
February
- February 16 Traian Vuia presented to the Académie des Sciences of Paris the possibility of flying with a heavier-than-air mechanical machine and his procedure for taking off, but it was rejected for being an utopia, adding the comments: The problem of flight with a machine which weighs more than air can not be solved and it is only a dream.
- March 31 - Richard Pearse is reputed to have made a powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, a monoplane of his own construction, that crash lands on a hedge. This date is computed from circumstantial evidence of eyewitnesses as the flight was not well-documented at the time. The machine made a flight claimed to be around 150 feet (45 m) on his farm at Upper Waitohi, near Timaru in south Canterbury, New Zealand.
- May 11 - Richard Pearse is claimed to have made a flight of around 1,000 yards (900 m), landing in the semi-dry bed of the Opihi River.
- August 18 - Karl Jatho makes a flight with his motored airplane in front of 4 people. [link]. His craft flies up to 200 feet (60 m) up to few yards/meters above the ground in a powered heavier-than-air craft.
- November 12 - The Lebaudy brothers make a controlled dirigible flight of 54 km (34 miles) from Moisson to Paris.
- December 17 - The Wright Brothers make four flights in their Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina following years of research and development. Orville Wright takes off first and flies 120 ft (37 m)in 12 seconds. This is frequently considered the first controlled, powered heavier-than-air flight and is the first such flight photographed. On the fourth effort, Wilbur flies 852 ft (260 m) in 59 seconds.
- Léon Levavasseur demonstrates his Antoinette engine, designed as a lightweight powerplant specifically for aircraft.
- Konstantin Tsiolkovski deduces the Basic Rocket Equation in his article Explorations of outer space with the help of reaction apparatuses.
The Wrights' claim to the first powered, piloted flight is somewhat contentious, as ambiguity arises from the definition of "flight". Pearse was somewhat secretive, and did not document or photograph his flights nearly as well as the Wrights did, however research has produced many corroborating eye-witness accounts of his exploits. The controversy is deepened because Pearse himself downplayed his achievements, not feeling that his "flights" were sufficiently well controlled to warrant the term. His advocates point out that some of these flights (especially that of July 10) were in fact better controlled than the Wrights' efforts of December 17. see First flying machine
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