pioneers of aviation

FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS inventors had been devising ways of flying through the air with the ease of a bird. Although balloons and airships had taken to the skies, it was not until a cold December day in 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first powered, sustained, and heavier-than-air flight. After that, aircraft technology progressed at a rapid rate and aviators crossed first the English Channel and then the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In 1914 the onset of World War I created a demand for fast, agile fighter planes, and by 1918 the aeroplane had become a relatively sophisticated and reliable machine. The introduction of passenger flights between major cities in the 1920s confirmed that a new age of travel had arrived.