December 17 1903: Orville and Wilbur Wright climb aboard their historic 'Flyer' and realize one of humankind's greatest dreams. From that first flight aviation technology has moved ahead with dizzying speed - and today every destination on the globe can be reached quickly and comfortably by air. This evolution took place over the relatively brief arc of a single century, one that we will surely look back upon as the extraordinary moment when homo sapiens, by nature a flightless creature, conquered the skies. This handsome volume guides the reader through the first one hundred years of the life of the airplane, presenting more than 1,000 evocative and detailed illustrations of the history of commercial and military aviation, from the first trans-oceanic flights to the penetration of the Earth's atmosphere, to the breaking of the sound barrier, and beyond. A fascinating and useful appendix gathers all the typologies of winged aircraft developed and built over the course of the 'Century of Flight.'