The history and development of mechanical flight may be confined almost entirely to the present century. In the last century some success had been achieved in gliding flight, model aeroplanes had been made and flown, and at least two man-carrying aeroplanes had actually left the groundj but it was not until the year 1903 that the Wright Bros., having ended a painstaking research in gliding flight, earned for themselves the honour of being the first men to fly.

Directly the success of the Wright Bros, became known, or rather when people began to believe that what the Wright Bros, claimed was actually true, the development of flying became rapid in the extreme. To-day one is tempted to wonder why it was that it had taken man so many centuries of civilisation to do what now seems to most of us rather an ordinary thing.