This is a list of aviation-related events from 1903:
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1903:
The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. In 1904 the Wright brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, which made longer-duration flights including the first circle, followed in 1905 by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III.
Samuel Pierpont Langley was an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist who invented the bolometer. He was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a professor of astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he was the director of the Allegheny Observatory.
The history of aviation extends for more than 2000 years, from the earliest forms of aviation such as kites and attempts at tower jumping to supersonic and hypersonic flight by powered, heavier-than-air jets.
Karl Jatho was a German inventor and aviation pioneer, performer and public servant of the city of Hanover.
Gustave Albin Whitehead was an aviation pioneer who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he designed and built gliders, flying machines, and engines between 1897 and 1915. Controversy surrounds published accounts and Whitehead's own claims that he flew a powered machine successfully several times in 1901 and 1902, predating the first flights by the Wright Brothers in 1903.
Thomas Etholen Selfridge was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and the first person to die in an airplane crash. He was also the first active-duty member of the U.S. military to die in a crash while on duty. He was killed while seated as a passenger in a Wright Flyer, on a demonstration flight piloted by Orville Wright.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 1904:
This is a list of aviation-related events during the 19th century :
The June Bug was an American "pioneer era" biplane built by the Aerial Experiment Association (A.E.A) in 1908 and flown by Glenn Hammond Curtiss. The aircraft was the first American airplane to fly at least 1km in front of a crowd.
The Wright Flyer made the first sustained flight by a manned heavier-than-air powered and controlled aircraft—an airplane—on December 17, 1903. Invented and flown by brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright, it marked the beginning of the pioneer era of aviation.
Early flying machines include all forms of aircraft studied or constructed before the development of the modern aeroplane by 1910. The story of modern flight begins more than a century before the first successful manned aeroplane, and the earliest aircraft thousands of years before.
The Wright Flyer II was the second powered aircraft built by Wilbur and Orville Wright. During 1904 they used it to make a total of 105 flights, ultimately achieving flights lasting five minutes and also making full circles, which was accomplished by Wilbur for the first time on September 20.
The Manly–Balzer was the first purpose-designed aircraft engine, built in 1901 for the Langley Aerodrome project. The engine was originally ordered from Stephen Balzer (1864–1940) in New York, but his five-cylinder radial engine design failed to live up to its claims. Langley's chief assistant, Charles Manly, then reworked the engine to produce a design that held the record for power-to-weight ratio for any engine for many years. Manly later worked for Glenn Curtiss, and was one of the team-members who designed the mass-produced Curtiss OX-5.
The Langley Aerodrome was a pioneering but unsuccessful manned, tandem wing-configuration powered flying machine, designed at the close of the 19th century by Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley. The U.S. Army paid $50,000 for the project in 1898 after Langley's successful flights with small-scale unmanned models two years earlier.
Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico is a United States Marine Corps airfield located within Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia. It was commissioned in 1919 and is currently home to HMX-1, the squadron that flies the President of the United States. The airfield is also known as Turner Field, after Colonel Thomas C. Turner, a veteran Marine aviator and the second director of Marine Corps Aviation, who lost his life in Haiti in 1931.
The Wright brothers patent war centers on the patent that the Wright brothers received for their method of airplane flight control. They were two Americans who are widely credited with inventing and building the world's first flyable airplane and making the first controlled, powered, and sustained heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903.
Charles Matthews Manly (1876–1927) was an American engineer.
Several aviators have been claimed to be the first to fly a powered aeroplane. Much controversy surrounds these claims. It is generally accepted today that the Wright brothers were the first to achieve sustained and controlled powered manned flight, in 1903. It is popularly held in Brazil that their native citizen Alberto Santos-Dumont was the first successful aviator, discounting the Wright brothers' claim because their Flyer took off from a rail, and in later flights would sometimes employ a catapult. An editorial in the 2013 edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft supported the claim of Gustave Whitehead. Claims by, or on behalf of, other pioneers such as Clément Ader have also been put forward from time to time.
"Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly" is an editorial published in the New York Times on October 9, 1903. The article incorrectly predicted it would take one to ten million years for humanity to develop an operating flying machine. It was written in response to Samuel Langley's failed airplane experiment two days prior. Sixty-nine days after the article's publication, American brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully achieved the first heavier-than-air flight on December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.