THE KITE AND A BIT OF KITESURFING HISTORY

 A kite is a flying manmade object that is unpowered and is heavier than air and is held down by a line made of string or a thin cord. Airflow resistance affects the air pressure under the kite to be greater than the air pressure above it therefore causing the kite to rise and this creates a horizontal drag along the direction of the wind. Thus the kite flies. The word “kite” comes from a bird of the hawk family by the same name and is recognized for its elegant flight, much like the manmade kites.

A kite is made up of three fundamental parts: the body, the line, and the bridle that attaches the line to the body in at least two places for control of movement.

Written references about kites in China date back to 200 B.C. but it is surmised that they were most likely invented many years before then. The ancient kites were made from cloth similar to modern flags that cascaded in the wind while attached to cords or flexible wooden rods and their first use was probably for distance signaling or communications. Later uses of kites in China were for religious ceremonies and warfare. The making of paper kites began soon after paper was invented in 100 A.D.

From China, kites spread to Japan, Korea, Burma (now Myanmar) and Malaysia and became an important part of the local cultures of these regions. Kites then spread to Indonesia, India and the Pacific Island and were eventually taken up by the Arabs who brought them into North Africa and Europe.

Early European kites date back to 1430 A.D. and were made of cloth or parchment, while the first written reference to kites in England was made in 1654 in a book by John Bate entitled “Mysteries of Nature and Art.” Bate’s instructions for making the kite were very similar to the way homemade kites are made today. European kites were made in many different shapes and required tails for stability which is no longer necessary with modern commercial kites.

Kites were used extensively in meteorology in the eighteenth century for recording air temperatures and for studying the weather through the middle of the twentieth century, when weather balloons and later weather satellites took over.
Lawrence Hargrave invented the box kite in 1893, which looked a lot like two or more open-ended boxes connected to a wooden frame and it flew well without a tail. This box kite influenced the design of early aircraft, including the airplane invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903.

In March 1951, Gertrude and Francis Rogallo patented a revolutionary new kind of kite with a flexible and limp body that is known today as a para-wing. Similar designs have been used in parachutes and hang gliders and military experiments showed that larger versions of this design could be used to carry weapons or vehicles over extremely treacherous terrain—a 4,000 square foot para-wing can lift a load of 6,000 pounds.

Kites are mainly flown today for recreation and art but there are also sport kites that are flown in aerial ballet and power kites are multi-line steerable kites designed to generate excess force for kite surfing, kite landboarding or kite buggying.