One hundred years ago today in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two brothers - Wilbur and Orville Wright - built a device made of wood, wire and cloth that they believed would take humans someplace they have never been before - airborne. At 10:35am Eastern Standard Time, Orville climbed into the cockpit of the 745-pound aircraft and flew 118 feet in 12-seconds - marking the very first powered, heavier than air, manned flight.

One hundred years later, humans have flown billions of times since the Wright Brother's historic feat. Aircraft today range from everything from shuttles that can carry a crew into space and back, to supersonic aircraft that can go from New York to London in only two hours - to jumbo jets that transport approximately 612 million passengers every year on flights that last not 12 seconds - but up to 18 hours.

After his first successful flight, Orville wrote, "This flight lasted only twelve seconds, but it was nevertheless the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in full flight, had sailed forward without a reduction in speed, and had finally landed at a point as high as that from which it began."

What the Wright Brothers did by inventing the aircraft literally changed the face of the world. Their invention brought humanity closer together in a way never thought possible. In a world that needed trains and boats to make cross-country and cross-continent trips - the Wright Brothers invented a device that allowed people to travel the world in hours as opposed to days.

There are very few people in our short history that have been solely responsible for advancing the entire human race as a result of their invention. People like Alexander Graham Bell who invented the telephone, Henry Ford who invented the automobile, and Nikola Tesla who invented the alternating-current (AC) power system that currently provides electricity for homes and buildings, have created devices that have completely re-shaped our society as a whole. None of us today can imagine living without the telephone, automobile, electricity or the airplane. So we, as a race of human beings, owe a great deal to these pioneers who helped shape the fabric of our lives.

As the Wright Brothers' famous Wright Flyer rests in the Smithsonian Museum, it has since been dwarfed by planes that can hold up to 550 people and can travel faster than the speed of sound. Aircraft today carry passengers on vacation, assist in the transportation of cargo - and are crucial in wartime operations. But if not for two brothers from North Carolina who possessed a vision and the genius to carry it out - the human race might never have flown the friendly skies.