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In the 1820s British inventor George Pocock developed man-lifting kites, using his own children in his experimentation. [8]In the early 1890s, Captain B. F. S. Baden-Powell, soon to become president of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain, developed his "Levitor" kite, a hexagonal-shaped kite intended to be used by the army in order to lift a man for aerial observation or for lifting ...
The Charvolant - a kite-drawn buggy. George Pocock (1774–1843) was an English schoolteacher, the founder of Tent Methodism [1] and an inventor, particularly known for having invented the 'Charvolant,' a kite-drawn carriage. George was born in Hungerford in Berkshire in 1774, the son of John Pocock, a cabinet-maker in that town, and his wife ...
A fact from Man-lifting kite appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did ... neutral language is better unless there is an English language term that is so well ...
In 1905, using a radically different design looking more like a tailless biplane, he devised and flew a manned "glider-kite". The machine was launched on a tether like a kite, and the tether was then released to allow gliding flight. The design showed little similarity to his earlier kites, but had more the appearance of a tailless biplane.
[citation needed] The man-carrying kite was developed a stage further in 1894 by Captain Baden Baden-Powell, brother of Lord Baden-Powell, who strung a chain of hexagonal kites on a single line. A significant development came in 1893 when the Australian Lawrence Hargrave invented the box kite and some man-carrying experiments were carried out ...
A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. Kites often have a bridle and tail to guide the face of the kite so the wind can lift it. [3] Some kite designs do not need a bridle; box kites can have a single attachment point. A kite may have fixed or moving anchors that can balance the kite.
Man-lifting kites were used in ancient China and Japan, often as a punishment for prisoners. Unmanned hot-air balloons and toy "bamboo-copters" are also recorded in Chinese history. The first manned free flight was in a hot-air balloon built by the brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier in Annonay, France in 1783.
Kites have been used for scientific purposes, such as Benjamin Franklin's famous experiment proving that lightning is electricity. Kites were the precursors to aircraft, and were instrumental in the development of early flying craft. Alexander Graham Bell experimented with very large man-lifting kites, as did the Wright brothers and Lawrence ...