The dream of flight

On December 17, 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright made the world's first sustained, powered, and controlled flight in a heavier-than-air flying machine, thereby realizing one of mankind's oldest and most persistent aspirations--human flight. The Dream of Flight honors that achievement, using the Library's rarest and most significant materials to explore the notion that flight, whether fanciful or actual, has inspired and occupied a central place in most cultures.