Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 8, 1993 TAG: 9303090324
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: NF-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Wendi Gibson Richert/Newsfun writer
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THOSE HIGH-FLYING SKY RIDERS
It flies and dances, dives and twists. If you want it to be yellow with green dots and red stripes - it can be. If you want it to be a box or a dog, or two cows side by side, it can be. If you want it to do tricks, it can do that, too.What in the world can do all tha, and more? You might not have seen it before, but kites can!
Go to a grassy park on a windy day this spring and you're likely to find at least one kite dancing in the sky. It may be a two-color dime-store kite bought for a couple of bucks, or it could be a really neat stunt kite that cost more than a couple hundred dollars.
But regardless of its value, the sight is much the same - those bright colors and designs floating above make you want to crane your neck skyward until the kite falls to the ground. You may even want to fly one yourself.
As fun and relaxing as kite flying is, it hasn't always been a recreational sport, bringing in big money for good kite-makers, and much enjoyment for kids and grown-ups, too.
You've heard of Benjamin Franklin's famous 1752 kite experiment? With twpo cedar sticks and a square silk handkerchief, he manufactured a kite, attached an iron wire to its top, and a brass key to the end of its string. Holding a silk ribbon attached to the string, Franklin lifted his kite into the air, flying it into a dark rain cloud, where lightning sparked the wire and sent a jolt of electricity through the kite and its string down to the key.
Franklin was pretty lucky he didn't get hurt, but he did make an important discovery - that electricity and lightning were the same thing.
Franklin wasn't the first to fly a kite, however. Though the kite's origin is murky, it's likely that the Chinese invented it more than 2,000 years ago, says William Weber Johnson in a 1989 article about kites in Smithsonian Magazine.
There are several legends that tell why kites were flown at this time, but one of the more interesting is about China's Kites' Day, celebrated on the ninth day of the ninth month.
World Book Encyclopedia tells us that a Chinese man learned a great misfortune would happen to his family on a particular day. To avoid it, he took his family out to a hill for kite-flying when this day came. When they returned home, they found their house destroyed and their animals dead. Kites' Day celebrates how the man saved his family. Today, the kites are supposed to float away evils that might attack their owners.
Kites had many other uses as well. In 1883 in England, Douglas Archibald measured wind velocity (the speed of wind) by attaching a wind meter to a kite's line. Later, in the early 1900s, the U.S. Weather Bureau used a Hargrave kite (box kite) to record barometric pressure and temperature along the wind velocity. It strung three Hargraves together and attached instruments to them before lifting them into the sky.
Some Hargrave kites were made strong and big enough to carry people, which led to successful inventions of powered airplanes.
In 1901, the first radio signal was transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean with a kite. And kites that could be controlled to mimic Japanese warplanes were used by the United States for target practice during World War II.
Today technology has taken over in science where the kite left off. But the fun of flying kites has led to the holding of kite festivals all over the world. Folks gather at these festivals to show their kites - many handmade by the flier.
Some kites can do tricks, turning in circles, diving into the water and back into the air, turning flips and spinning. And some kites are really lots of kites stacked on top of each other, or a couple of kites flown side-by-side.
These kites can be brightly colored and heavily designed, and they can cost a lot of money. However, you can buy simple kites in toy and discount stores for only a few dollars. Or, you can design one for yourself using the instructions on this NewsFun cover.