Flying between countries and continents is an accepted way of life to millions of people. But as their airliners cruise along at hundreds of miles an hour, tens of thousands of feet above the earth, how many spare a thought for those early pioneers? Allcock and Brown in 1919, and Charles Lindbergh eight years later, flew the. Atlantic route long before there were passenger aircraft capable of spanning the great divide. Britain's Alan Cobham sold the adventure of flight to the public and its commercial possibilities to government with long-distance flights to the outposts of Empire in the 1920s. Adventurers went on to fly over the Poles and Everest. When the world turned to war in 1939, the days of the individual trailblazer were almost at an end. But they had created a rich legacy for post-war aviation to build on.