Ocean travel was, then, increasingly free of risk. Aviation was not, but it had a grip on the Edwardian imagination that not even the forthcoming wonders of the Olympic and Titanic could rival. On 17 December 1903, the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, made a number of flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in history’s first powered, manned and controlled aeroplane. That the ground they covered was minimal was immaterial. The fact that they had flown at all demonstrated that it could be done.
