1903 in aviation
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1903:
March
- March 31/day unknown- : Richard Pearse 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 (45.7 m) on his farm at upper Waitohi, in south Canterbury, New Zealand.
- May 2- Pearse makes a hop or flight of unknown distance, with the aircraft again finishing lodged in a hedge.
- May 11- Pearse is claimed to have made a flight of around 1,000 yards (914 m), landing in the semi-dry bed of the Opihi River.
July
- July 10 - Pearse makes another hop or flight of unknown distance, with the aircraft yet again finishing lodged in a hedge.
August
- August 18 - Karl Jatho makes a flight with his motored airplane in front of 4 people. . Karl Jathos craft flies up to 200 feet up to few yards \ meters above the ground in a powered heavier-than-air craft. Not launched from a height.
November
December
- Léon Lavasseur demonstrates his Antoinette engine, designed as a lightweight powerplant specifically for aircraft.
- December 17 - The Wright Brothers make four flights in their Flyer I at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. These are generally accepted as the first powered, piloted flights (but see below). After years of dedicated research and development, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright fly 300 yards in the first practical aeroplane. This may be the first controlled powered heavier-than-air flight and the first photographed powered heavier-than-air flight.
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 Early flying machines
