When the Wright Brothers—Wilbur (1867–1912) and Orville (1871–1948)—made the first powered flight in 1903, they could not have known how important air travel would become. At the time, nobody showed much interest in their machine and the brothers went back to making bicycles. The times would soon change. The first passenger service using winged aircraft began flying the twenty-two miles between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Florida, in 1914. The service could carry only one passenger on each trip, and the service lasted only a few weeks. By 2002, a Boeing 747-400 jetliner could carry 524 passengers up to 8,400 miles. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, air travel is cheaper, faster, and safer than ever before.

Between the years 1910 and 1914, zeppelins were part of the travel scene. The giant airships safely carried a total of about thirty-four thousand passengers. German zeppelins used hydrogen gas to make them lighter than air...