SEATTLE - If Wilbur and Orville Wright were alive today, they'd love what The Museum of Flight is doing in their honor.

On Saturday, the museum will open its Birth of Aviation exhibition in conjunction with the Experimental Aircraft Association's touring Wright Bros. exhibit, Countdown to Kitty Hawk.

"It's probably one of the most significant exhibits during the Centennial of Flight this year," Ben Sarao, the museum's lead exhibit developer, said Tuesday.

The Birth of Aviation exhibit will be on display here through Feb. 1. It traces the Wright brothers' inspirations, trials and triumphs from the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago through their 1915 sale of The Wright Co.

The Wright brothers, two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, are credited with making the first manned, powered flight on Dec. 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C.

Highlights from the exhibit will include never-before-displayed early documents of The Wright Co.

"These papers were thought to be long lost and we were actually able to find a person who'd had them in their possession," Sarao said.

The museum plans on putting the Wright brothers into historical context with other great inventors at the beginning of the 20th Century.

In the touring exhibit, which will be available for viewing here until Sept. 1, the Experimental Aircraft Association is showing off a reproduction of the Wright Flyer. The plan is to fly it Dec. 17, 2003, at Kitty Hawk.

After the flight, the plane is scheduled to go to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

"We actually have letters in this exhibit written by Wilbur Wright which talk about that first flight and how he flew in a 20 mile-an-hour" wind, Sarao said. "He says what flight is all about is the ability to control the craft and they created a way to do that."

The documents will give visitors a clear understanding of what it was like to offer the breakthrough - "an invention which most people were skeptical would ever be created" - and how the Wright brothers made it available to the public, Sarao said.

The exhibit also features the Microsoft 1903 Wright Flyer simulator, which allow visitors to relive that first flight.

Randal Dietrich, executive director for the Oshkosh, Wis.-based Experimental Aircraft Association, crashed the Wright Flyer when he got on the simulator.

"I loved it, but it's a little bit uncomfortable because if you can imagine flying on your belly, that's different from the experience of pilots nowadays," said Dietrich, 34. "So that kind of threw me. I didn't have much protection and I crashed, but it didn't cost me anything and no one got hurt."

The Countdown to Kitty Hawk exhibit began its tour in April and Seattle is the fifth city it has visited.