The development of powered flight is a twentieth-century story. As that innovative century is now drawing to a close, the incredible attainments of flight, technical, political, and geographical, can now be assessed. The history of aviation has touched all the Western world: we are, or have been, threatened by bombers, defended by fighters, supplied by freighters and have travelled by airliners. It is progress without parallel, from the Wright brothers to Concorde in a single lifetime