Timeline of aviation in the 20th century explained
1901
- July 31 - German meteorologists Berson and Süring climb to 10,800 m in a free balloon.
October
November–December
- The Wright brothers optimize their No. 3 Glider wing design with the help of wind tunnel measurements.
1902
February
- February 4 - First balloon flight in Antarctica when Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton ascend to 800 feet (240 m) in a tethered hydrogen balloon to take the first Antarctic aerial photographs.
- February 4 - Future pilot Charles Lindbergh is born.
March
April
- April 30 - The St Louis Aeronautical Exposition opens in Missouri. A highlight is Octave Chanute launching a replica of his 1896 glider.
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 a 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
- 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
- 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 Ōpihi River.
August
October
- October 7 – Samuel Langley conducts the first tests of his full-sized man-carrying version of his earlier model aerodromes. The pilot Charles Manly nearly drowned when the machine slid off its launch apparatus atop a houseboat and fell into the Potomac River.
November
December
- December 8 - second attempt by Charles Manly to fly Langley's repaired full-sized aerodrome. As with the October 7 attempt the machine failed to fly tripping on its launch gear and somersaulting into the Potomac River nearly killing Manly. A surviving photograph captures the machine upended on its side as it falls off the houseboat. Langley himself was absent at this attempt but the machine's failure to fly ended his government(aka U.S. Army) funded attempts at building a successful full sized man-carrying flying machine.
- December 17 - The Dayton, Ohio, native Wright Brothers make four flights in their Wright 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, which is considered by some to be the first true controlled, powered heavier-than-air flight, Wilbur flies 852 ft (260 m) in 59 seconds.
1904
- The Wrights apply for patents for their flying machine in Germany and France.
April
May
June
August
September
November
- November 9 - Wilbur Wright flies the Wright Flyer II a distance of 3 miles near Dayton, Ohio, the first flight of longer than five minutes.
1905
March
- March 16–20 - Daniel Maloney is launched by balloon in a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery and makes three successful flights at Aptos, CA, the highest launch being at 3,000 feet with an 18-minute descent to a predetermined landing location.
April
June
July
- July 14 - Orville Wright has a serious crash with Wright Flyer III, upon which the Wright Brothers radically alter the aircraft. The pivot point of the front rudder is mainly the culprit for the Flyer's insistent pitching.
- July 18 - Daniel Maloney makes a launch in a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery at Santa Clara, California. However, a balloon cable damages the glider and upon release Maloney and the aircraft fell uncontrolled to the ground, leading to Maloney's death.
September
- September - The Wright Brothers resume flight experiments with the re-designed Flyer III with performance of the airplane immediately in the positive. Smooth controlled flights lasting over 20 minutes now occur.
October
November
December
