"On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two brothers--bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio--changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe that the age of flight had begun, with the first powered machine carrying a pilot ... [David McCullough] draws on the extensive Wright family papers to profile not only the brothers but their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them."--...

For years, Wilbur Wright and his younger brother, Orville, experimented in obscurity, supported only by their exceptional family. Meanwhile, the world watched as Samuel Langley, armed with a contract from the U.S. War Department and all the resources of the Smithsonian Institution, sought to create the first manned flying machine. But while Langley saw flight as a problem of power, the Wrights saw a problem of balance. Thus their machines took two...

2003 marks the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. In this episode of Nova that explores the secrets of the Wright brothers' innovative genius, a team of modern builders, aviation experts, and historians join together to retrace, rebuild, and re-fly planes built to the specifications developed by the Wright Brothers a century ago. Vivid footage captures both the Wrights' own historic flights and the team's...