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Chapter 12

A Brief History Of Kites

Kite flying is one of the oldest pastimes in the world. No one can say with certainty precisely how old it is, but we do know that it goes back for many centuries, and that the beginnings of the story have an eastern setting. On the latter point, more will be said in a moment. In the meantime, this may be said. In its general significance, the invention of the kite stands out as an expression of man's age-old and universal longing to conquer the air.

It cannot be said with precision just how or when thoughts about flying began to occupy man's mind. What is known, however, is that from the time he began to write and to draw, the idea of flight was present; an idea which was born, no doubt, through watching the birds in their travels, doing what he himself could not do. The ability which he himself did not possess he bestowed upon the beings born of his imagination. In ancient stories of superhuman mastery of the elements, gods and devils transport themselves with wings, and men and beasts also navigate the air. Thus in one way or another man's interest in flight was sustained, and in the course of time this interest led to various attempts to achieve mastery of the air.

In the story of man's conquest of the air, kites have an important place. It cannot be said with certainty who invented them or when they were first flown. Ancient Greek tradition ascribes the invention to Archytas of Tarentum in the fourth century B.C. The Koreans attribute the origin of the kite to a general who, in the dim and distant past, put fresh courage into his troops by sending up a kite to which a lantern was fixed. They believed that it was a new star and a sign of divine help.

Above the mists of speculation the fourth century B.C. stands as a landmark. It is established that by this time kites were well-known in China. It is said that the first Chinese kites were probably made of wood. This could well be, though a case could be made out that they might have had a bamboo framework with a silk cover, since silk is said to have been used there as far back as 4,000 years ago. It is probable that by the fourth century this material was being used. About the year A.D. 105 the Chinese discovered a method of making paper sheets from vegetable fibre. This made available another suitable covering material.

When we turn to the purposes for which kites were used in those far-off days, much that is of interest may be noted. Ancient Chinese historians have recorded that they were employed to carry ropes across rivers and gorges. The ropes were made fast, and wooden bridges suspended from them. It is said that a general of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 221) put the enemy to flight by flying musical kites over their camp at night. The enemy fled, because they believed that the music was the voices of their guardian angels, warning them of coming danger. There is a tradition, too, that man-lifting kites were used in attacks on cities, and to drop men behind enemy lines. It is difficult to say when this strategy was first employed, so no date can be given. It is known, however, that the Chinese and the Japanese used man-lifting kites to survey the enemy's position as early as the seventeenth century A.D.

We now consider kite flying as a national pastime in China. By the early centuries A.D. kites were being made in a great variety of shapes, representing, for example, men, birds, animals and monsters. There were kites, which carried lanterns, strings, pipes and small windmills. (In the latter perhaps there is the germ of an idea for an aircraft propeller.) Again, some were adapted for the sport of kite-fighting. The upper parts of the control lines were coated with glue and ground glass. It was the aim of a competitor to cut his opponent's line and bring his kite down.

Scenes which presented a variety of colour, form, and movement were displayed through the centuries. One author, some years ago, described such a scene, wherein the sky would be full of all sorts of kites, which were being flown by old and young alike. A personal recollection of this fondness for kite flying may not be out of place here. Not so long ago, the writer saw two elderly Chinese, skilfully flying their kites in the grounds of a certain hospital, while other patients who were fit enough, were playing cricket, or otherwise passing the time. (An illustration of Chinese flying kites will be seen in Plate V.)

There is a tradition that kites^ were known in Ancient Greece and Rome. One should not be too dogmatic on this point. On the other hand, taking fourth century China as the starting point, one may confidently trace the spread of kite flying all over Asia and beyond, extending to such countries as New Zealand. The Maoris are said to have fastened perforated reeds to their kites. It was believed that the sounds which they made would scare off evil spirits.

Kite flying was established in Europe by the fifteenth century. It may well have been known for some time before this, possibly being introduced by voyagers to the east. Marco Polo, the traveller from Venice, arrived in China at the close of the thirteenth century. He stayed there for seventeen years. During this time he became a member of the Emperor's staff and moved freely about the country. When he returned to Venice with a valuable collection of things, people would not believe the stories he told.

One is tempted to think that a kite found a place among the things, which he brought back. At any rate, as he talked of the people and places he had seen, it is possible that he did mention their fondness for kite flying. In the search for the origin of the kite in Europe, there must also be borne in mind the possibility that they were brought in as occasional novelties by traders with the east.

We move now from the realm of might-have-been to that of certainty. In the year 1405 illustrations of hot-air kites are shown in German manuscripts. They were a cross between a kite and a balloon. They were dragon-shaped and hollow and had a light inside them. Apparently they were used as military standards, and were flown by means of cords held by horsemen. The diamond-shaped kite made its appearance in Europe in the sixteenth century, and from the evidence which can be gathered it seems that this remained the basic shape for a long time. An illustration in John Bate's Mysteries of Nature and Art published in 1635, shows one of these kites with a bridle and a tail rather longer than the kite itself.

In the course of kite history we follow a path which brings us eventually to the invention of the aeroplane. Every invention must have an inventor, and in the history of the aeroplane Sir George Cayley has an important place. He has been called the true inventor of the aeroplane. He lived and carried out most of his research work at Brompton Hall, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. He was a man with an inquiring mind, and in his search for the principles governing flight he made repeated tests with paper and kites. He came to realize what is called the aerodynamic significance of the kite. He applied his knowledge in such a way that the aeroplane eventually became a reality and not just a dream. It may be realized how important apparently simple experiments can be when it is remembered that on the basis of his experiments he was able to lay down the scientific principles of heavier-than-air flight. He observed his kites as they moved in the air, his inquiring mind probing into the secret of their flight. How much is owed by the world of today to this great man, experimenting with simple objects which contained a wonderful promise of the shape of things to come!

It is interesting to read Cayley's own words about his experiments with kites. In 1804 he wrote: *A common paper kite containing 154 square inches was fastened to a rod of wood at the hinder end, and supported from the front part from the same rod by a peg, so as to make an angle of 6°. With it this rod proceeded on behind the kite and supported a tail, made of two planes crossing each other at right angles, containing 20 inches each. This tail could be set to any angle with the stick. The center of gravity was varied by sticking a weight with a sharp point into the stick. If a velocity of 15 feet per second was given to it in an horizontal direction, it would skim for 20 or 30 yards supporting its own weight, and if pointed downward in an angle of about 18°, it would proceed uniformly in a right line for ever with a velocity of 15 feet per second. It was very pretty to see it sail down a steep hill, and it gave the idea that a larger instrument would be a better and a safer conveyance down the Alps than even the sure footed mule. The least inclination of the tail towards the right or left made it shape its course like a ship by the rudder.* (An illustration of this kite-glider will be seen in Plate VH.)

The above words, it has been said, are a description of the world's first true aeroplane. The machine had a pegtop kite for the wing, which was attached to a pole at an angle of 6 degrees from the horizontal. The kite-like tail had two pieces, set at right angles to each other. In later machines which he built and flew, the kite-cum-glider look was preserved. Some were flown by means of a towing rope; free flights were made by others, in which passengers were carried. The story goes that somewhat reluctantly, Sir George's coachman made a flight in one of the machines. He was dragged across a valley and came down with a crash. Picking himself up out of the wreckage, he stumbled to his master and said he was giving up his job, because he had been hired to drive and not to fly. However, it is through men like Cayley, and it may be added, his coachman, that progress is made.

Another air-minded gentleman, George Pocock, deserves a place in the history of the kite. In 1825, one of his kites made an ascent, carrying up his daughter Martha. She was one of the first women to fly. One wonders how she felt during this short pioneering flight. She must have had great confidence in her father and his man-carrying kite. In 1827 he published a work entitled The Aeropleustic Art or Navigation in the Air by the Use of Kites or Buoyant Sails. In the same year he harnessed two very large kites to a carriage. He tested this kite-carriage on the public highway and travelled some distance between Bristol and Marlborough. It is recorded that he easily overtook the London mail coach en route. The sight of a carriage bowling along without horses must have caused some alarm, wonder and amusement among the onlookers. And no doubt the thrifty-minded hailed it as a very cheap means of transport.

In 1859 E. J. Cordner, an Irish Catholic priest, invented a man-lifting kite apparatus for ship-to-shore rescue work. A number of kites were used to lift a single-passenger car from the ship and to convey it to the shore. Although the system was tested it was not used in actual rescue work. Such work as this was hindered because of the old superstition that anyone who rescued another from the sea, would himself be drowned within the year.

From the sea and ships we return to the air and aircraft. Experiments and developments continued to show the influence of the kite, and particularly this is the case with the box kite. Any reference to the box kite in a historical context must be linked to a name famous in kite history, that of Lawrence Hargrave (or Hargreave). In 1884 this Australian began his experiments which resulted in the invention of the box kite in 1893. This invention was greeted with enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic within the space of a few months. Such a reception is not hard to understand, because the box kite has proved itself to be superior in lift and stability. The most popular form of Hargrave's kites consisted of two large oblong cloth boxes, open on two sides and secured to a framework. An illustration of the kite will be seen in Plate IV.

Hargrave came to England in 1899. His lectures and demonstrations did much to popularize his kites which were already familiar to aircraft pioneers.

Whilst he was in England Hargrave lent some of his kites to P. S. Pilcher, who wished to test them in his experiments in the direction of powered flight. Pilcher, a well-known glider pilot, designed an aircraft, which presumably showed the influence of the box-kite in its structure, and which he intended to demonstrate. Unfortunately he was seriously injured when another of his aircraft, the Hawk, crashed during an experimental flight, and he died soon afterwards. Hargrave himself had an idea, which apparently was not followed up, of linking a number of his kites together, and suspending an engine and a propeller from them. He thought that when the cable anchor was freed the machine would continue under its own power.

In continuing the story, a brief account may be given of the achievements of other pioneers. Captain B. F. S. Baden-Powell, brother of the founder of the Scout movement, was one of them. He was a well-known balloonist, who at Pirbright Camp in 1894, successfully demonstrated his man-lifting kites. A few years later, H. D. Wise tried out a linked series of box-kites which were able to lift a man.

In this brief list of pioneers a special place must be given to Samuel Franklin Cody. He was born in America, and became a naturalized Englishman in 1896. One biography states that he was the first man to fly in Great Britain, and was the maker of the first practical British flying machine. Cody worked at the War Office Kite and Balloon Factory at Farnborough. He patented his man-lifting kites in 1901. They followed the pattern set by Baden-Powell, that is, in the form of a train or linked series. Cody's kite system was officially adopted by the War Office in 1904. In this system the operator was carried by one kite, which was connected to the other kites by means of a cable. The carrier-kite could be raised or lowered on the cable. It appears that there were also cords by means of which the operator could make the carrier-kite swivel to the right or the left. It is interesting to note that Mrs Cody, following Martha Pocock's example, made a few ascents with her husband's kites. In 1903, Cody made a Channel crossing from France to England. This he accomplished in a specially made boat which was harnessed to a kite—hence the name, kite-boat. He also fitted an engine to a modified kite, called a power-kite, and in it he made what is called the first short aeroplane flight in England.

The link between the kite and the aeroplane is stressed in a statement made by O. L. Owen, a writer on aviation. He says: 'All the successful gliders and power-driven planes of the experimental period were based to a large extent upon the principles of the box-kite.' We may also note what another authority on the subject, C. H. Gibbs-Smith, says: 'The first successful biplanes in Europe (1905-10) were not only based on these kites, but were colloquially referred to as "box-kites".'

Space is too limited to allow more than a brief mention of that daring and resourceful aviator, Octave Chanute. He was an American who designed and experimented with many machines and made over 1,000 flights. One illustration depicts him as literally hanging on in the air to a craft which had box-kite type wings and a kite-like tail.

His fellow-countrymen, Wilbur and Orville Wright, won never-dying fame in the world of flight. They were the sons of a bishop and lived at Dayton, Ohio. An early interest in kites was the starting point on the road which led to great achievements. In September 1900, they took their first glider to the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, on the coast of North Carolina. The machine was mostly flown as a kite, being controlled by cords reaching to the ground. On one or two occasions it was flown as a glider, and some successful flights were made. These were the signs and promises of greater things to come.

From America we turn to Europe and to Alberto Santos-Dumont, a wealthy Brazilian who lived in France. He borrowed Hargrave's box-kite idea, and built a machine which was virtually a box-kite plus an engine. At Bagatelle, near Paris, in 1906, he won the French Aero Club's prize for the first public aeroplane flight in Europe by flying 25 metres.

In passing, the influence of the box-kite in aeroplane design of this period is shown in the illustration of the Voisin biplane (see Plate I.)

Another style of kite makes an appearance at this time, and it is associated with the name of Dr Alexander Graham Bell, who is known as the inventor of the first practical telephone in 1876. He designed a tetrahedral kite, which as the name implies was a triangular pyramid. It was tried out first as a man-lifting kite and then in 1909 an engine and propeller were fitted. The machine just managed to lift a man into the air and the idea was dropped.

 Through the 'nineties and into the dawn of the twentieth century, enthusiasts in various parts of the world were making hazardous experiments with kites and kite-like machines. They were persistent and courageous in their attempts to conquer the air. By their devotion to a great idea they blazed a trail which leads to the aeroplane of today.

Passengers in the great flying machines of the modern world owe a great debt to the kite and to those who realized and worked out its inherent possibilities. It may not be easy at first to discern any connexion between the kite and the aeroplane. It is to be hoped that this brief history will make this connexion a little more obvious, and will help the reader to understand what Captain Ferber meant when he declared that the kite was only an anchored aeroplane. It is true that he was referring to the aeroplanes of his own day, that is to say, the experimental period which has been under review. During this time many of the machines, as we have seen, showed the influence of the kite very plainly in their design. As a result of this likeness between the two, people then may indeed have regarded the kite as an anchored aeroplane, and to put it the other way round, the aeroplane as an unanchored kite. But the meaning of Ferber's statement goes deeper than a passing likeness. In other words, the statement says that the forces which operate in flying a kite also operate in the flight of an aeroplane. Therefore, though the aeroplane of today may, in some respects, seem far removed from the earlier machines, and even farther from the kite, the connexion between the kite and the aeroplane remains. In flight both are subject to the influence of resistance; propulsion; lift and weight.

In the course of its history the kite has been linked to other great names and events. In order to show this, the eighteenth century is taken for the starting point. In 1706 Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts. This great American statesman was an authority on meteorology. In 1746 he began to study the problems of electricity. In 1752 he carried out a demonstration to prove that lightning is electrical energy. He flew a kite in a thunderstorm in order to draw electricity from the clouds. He fastened a key to the kite wire-line, to which he also attached a silk ribbon. The ribbon was to prevent the lightning from passing through his body. The lightning travelled down the line and was conducted to earth. When he announced to the Royal Society that his kite had drawn lightning from the clouds, he was laughed at; but later it had to be admitted that what he said was true. As a result of his experiment, he invented his lightning conductor in 1753. When it is recorded that the Empire State Building in New York was struck by lightning sixty-three times in three years it proves the importance of efficient conductors, and therefore proves the importance of Franklin's discovery. It is interesting to note that a kite played a part in the invention of this safety device. Incidentally, when he was a boy, Franklin used a kite to draw him across a lake when bathing. He declared that the English Channel could be crossed by the same means.

Franklin's demonstration with a kite is but one instance of their being used in connexion with the weather. The weather is a subject of never-failing interest, therefore it is worth noting that to help people to know more about it, the kite has played an important part. In the nineteenth century, kites began to be used to carry meteorological instruments and this practice continued to well into the present century. An outstanding ascent by meteorological kites took place in Germany, in 1905. The foremost of a train of six attained a height of four miles. This ascent was over half-way through the troposphere—the lowest layer of the atmosphere; and it provided valuable information about temperature, pressure and humidity at high altitudes.

Guglielmo Marconi, like Benjamin Franklin, was deeply interested in electricity. This interest was obvious even when he was a small boy. In 1895, he started to experiment with methods of sending and receiving the electrical impulses, called Hertzian waves. This was a stage in the progress towards that day, 12th December, 1901, when he picked up the first wireless signals to be sent across the Atlantic Ocean, from Poldhu in Cornwall to St John's, Newfoundland. The name of this wireless pioneer is known universally, what is not so widely known is that his great achievement in 1901 was accomplished with the aid of a kite. Marconi used it to support an aerial, outside the barracks of St John's, where he had installed his apparatus.

During World War I (1914-18) kites did service to the armed forces in the form of kite-balloons. A tail of kites was attached to the balloon to keep it steady. Kite-balloons were used in aerial observation, and attained an operational height of about 5,000 feet. They were also flown at sea by ships protecting convoys, to keep a watch for German submarines. In addition, kite-balloons were employed in Britain as a form of air defence. This was achieved by making them support nets of thin steel cables to foul enemy aircraft. In World War II (1939-45) kites continued to give valuable service. They were used after the manner of Marconi's kite, to support wireless aerials. They were sent up from boats and rafts by survivors from wrecked ships or planes.

This brief history would be incomplete without some reference to the name, kite. The original form and meaning of the word are doubtful. The present form of the word goes back to the Middle English period of the English language (A.D. 1100-1500). As to its meaning, in the first place, we know that it is the name given to a bird of prey, a member of the falcon family, and of the order of the hawks. Secondly, as the word hawk in this connexion means 'to seize', thus denoting a characteristic of these birds, so etymologically, the name kite would seem to denote the graceful soaring flight of the birds of this name. Gilbert White in The Natural History of Selborne describes this flight in these words: 'Thus kites . . . sail round in circles with wings expanded and motionless.' Thirdly, the traditional diamond-shaped kite, when it is high in the air, bears some resemblance to- this bird of prey. Thus one may visualize how our forefathers might have come to apply the name to a man-made contrivance, for in both cases soaring flight is an important feature.

We have looked back upon the kite's participation in some of the notable achievements of the past. We have taken, as it were, a 'kite's-eye' view of people, places and events. This survey has covered many centuries and countries, so that it may truly be said that the kite, from the historical point of view, has an international significance. As far as the prospects of kite flying are concerned, we believe that it will long continue to be an interesting and rewarding pastime all over the world.

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