Included in this last section is a single document from 1903, an entry from Orville Wright’s diary describing his and his brother Wilbur’s successful attempt at powered air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright brothers’ achievement may be said to epitomize the emergence of modern America. American aviation would come to dominate the scene. Other technological innovations giving rise to the modern era were likewise American: the light bulb and electrification, the telephone, motion pictures, the automobile (at least the mass-produced automobile), and the assembly line. A little over a decade after the Wright brothers’ first controlled flight, the world would become witness to a massive convergence of global technological power and destruction (including effective air divisions) in World War I.

Included in this last section is a single document from 1903, an entry from Orville Wright’s diary describing his and his brother Wilbur’s successful attempt at powered air flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Wright brothers’ achievement may be said to epitomize the emergence of modern America. American aviation would come to dominate the scene. Other technological innovations giving rise to the modern era were likewise American: the light bulb and electrification, the telephone, motion pictures, the automobile (at least the mass-produced automobile), and the assembly line. A little over a decade after the Wright brothers’ first controlled flight, the world would become witness to a massive convergence of global technological power and destruction (including effective air divisions) in World War I.