THE HISTORY OF KITES

А
The fighter kite is an ancient design that became popular in Asia. While there were some variations, fighter kites tended to be small, flat and diamond-shaped and were flown throughout Asia, including in Japan and India. The main part of this kite was made of paper, while its spine consisted of a piece of tapered bamboo. There was also a rounded, balanced bow. These kites did not have tails, which were thought to affect their manoeuvrability. Most of the line was made of cotton but part of this was covered with an abrasive, which could cut an opponent’s line in a competition.

European kites developed later, possibly crafted out of flags. Nowadays there are eight main kinds of kite worldwide: the flat, bowed, box, sled, delta and compound, all of which have frames, and now the parafoil which is somewhat like a parachute, and the rotor which has a spinning vane between two cylinders. Perhaps most significantly, the materials used to build Kites remained basically unchanged for hundreds of years, but today the materials that comprise the various components of kites are often synthetic.

B
In Europe, kites were curiosities at first rather than being part of the culture, but they were soon used as vehicles for discovery and innovation. In 1893, William A Eddy introduced a tailless kite that was in the shape of an elongated diamond. He was interested in the potential kites had for the purposes of meteorology and aerial photography. Besides being responsible for a renewed interest in kite-flying throughout Europe, Eddy’s kite was also utilised by the United States Weather Bureau.

In 1752, the American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin went out in a thunderstorm with his son to fly a flat kite with a pointed wire. They attached a metal key to the kite’s line and watched as it became electrified, both miraculously avoiding electrocution. This proved that lightning was a natural occurrence called electricity, and this experiment led to Franklin inventing the lightning rod, a metallic rod that protects a structure from lightning damage by guiding currents from lightning flashes into the ground.

C
Kites also contributed greatly to the development of the airplane. The first recorded aircraft with a person inside was British aviator Sir George Cayley’s glider in 1853. He used modified kites to test whether his glider idea would work. This was a big step in aviation, as it dispelled the former assumption that an aircraft would need wings that flapped like a bird’s.

Around 1900 Orville and Wilbur Wright started using kites to test their ideas for planes. These brothers ran a bicycle shop in Ohio in the United States and were obsessed with aviation. It was the Wright brothers who concentrated on how to control the aircraft, something that had, until then, baffled many other Inventors. The Wright brothers made a box kite that was wired in a way that meant the kite could be made to turn. Not long after that, they successfully flew the first manned airplane. Without experiments with kites, modern aircraft would have taken much longer to be developed.

D
Whatever the design of a kite, in order to fly, it needs to have certain characteristics. Firstly, it needs to be able to lift in the wind and this requires an aerodynamic structure. It also needs to have something that stops it from flying away, this is called a tether. One end of the tether is connected to the kite and the other is usually on a hand-held spool for a person to manage the length of the line. Another necessary component is the bridle, which is two or more lines that are attached to each other at a point and this can be adjusted according to the strength and direction of the wind.

E
There are three forces that control kite flight; these are lift, gravity and drag. If the wind is stronger than the resistance of the air (drag) and the pull of gravity, the kite should be able to fly. One way in which a kite differs from a plane is that when the kite is fixed (using the tether) so that the wind gives it lift, it maintains what is called ‘perpetual stall. This is essential for a kite to fly but would not be a suitable design for an aeroplane. If a kite is flat, it should have a tail to provide drag so that the nose of the kite is pointing upwards.

Although many people try it, running with a kite is not an effective way to send it into the sky. It is better to start off with two people, one holding the kite and the other with the line unravelled about 30 metres, holding the reel or spool. The bridle of the kite should be facing the person who is not holding it and the breeze should come from behind the kite. If all this has been done, the kite should be launched successfully when the person holding it lets go of it.