PROPELLING KITES

The Chinese originated the kite for ritualistic and recreational purposes years before the first written record in 200 B.C. and from China the kite trend spread to its neighboring countries and then to the rest of the world. The Chinese are also recognized for using the kite as a propulsion mechanism in the thirteenth century.

From a very young age, George Pocock was enamored by kites and their lifting power and took to experimenting. At first he used small stones and slowly progressed to heavier and larger loads. When he grew up and became a schoolteacher in Prospect Place, Bristol in England in the 1800s his interest in kites did not wan and he began experiments with his pupils.

By 1820 Pocock was convinced that a combination of multiple kites could support massive weight and attempted using man-lifting kites. In 1825 Pocock used a thirty-foot kite that he rigged to a chair to life his daughter Martha over 270 feet into the air. (Martha, incidentally, eventually becomes the mother of the extraordinarily famous English cricket player, William Gilbert Grace who developed most of the modern batting techniques that are still being practiced today).

Still in 1825, Pocock continued to use his family as subjects of his experimentation and lifted his son to the top of a 200-foot cliff outside of Bristol. Once at the top, Pocock’s son dismounted briefly and then ended the experiment by sliding down to the ground at the bottom of the cliff on a line that had been clipped to the chair. Thus Pocock was completely convinced that kites were capable of lifting people, therefore he concluded that they could also pull other kinds of loads and embarked on a new set of experiments.

Pocock’s new experiments involved pulling vehicles. He resolved to prove that using a relatively small number of large kites in various layouts were capable of pulling a carriage with passengers without the help of horses, of course. And in 1826, he patented the design of his "Charvolant" buggy that used two kites on a single line 1,500 to 1,800 feet long to generate enough force to pull it while carrying several passengers at substantial speeds—similar to the modern sport of kite buggying.

Pocock recorded in his book, “The Aeropleustic Art or Navigation in the Air by the Use of Kites or Buoyant Sails,” that his first Charvolant traveled 20 miles per hour over an extensive distance. In the same book he also talks about three Charvolants travelling together for 113 miles between Bristol and Marlborough when one of the Charvolants passed the mail coach, which was at that time the faster passenger vehicle. He further reported that on another trip a Charvolant passed the coach of the Duke of Gloucester. The violation of etiquette was so grave that the Charvolant was forced to a stop to allow the Duke to pass.

Tolls were levied on the roads in England at the time according to the number of horses drawing a carriage. Since the Charvolant had no horses it escaped the tolls. Charvolants would have surely become commercialized if they had been easier to control.

In light of today’s energy crisis and the “green movement”, it may be a good idea to use Charvolants—just a thought for consideration.