Ben Ruhe

From Discourse-2

Jan Westerink. Bregje Westerink attends the replica Matthew Sellers kite built and flown by her father. Her usual role is photographer for his First Kites Action Research Team.

A student of early historical kites, Jan Westerink of Zutphen, Holland, was searching patent databases when he found a design by Matthew B. Sellers, an American flight pioneer, that caught his fancy. The kite has wings like a glider and an eye-catching tubular tail. It was patented in 1908, meaning its 100th anniversary was due this year.

Westerink, a former industrial designer turned handicraft teacher who has built replicas of several dozen largely unknown kites from the first half of the last century, decided to build this one. Patent sheets not specifying measurements or even materials, he guessed at the size and used bamboo and undyed cotton cloth in its construction. Instead of using hemp line, as Sellers almost certainly did, Westerink instead substituted nylon line. He knew his professional nylon winder would give him the best control, particularly useful for an object with unknown flying properties.

Westerink constructed the flier, carted it to the Historical Kite Symposium meeting in Germany to show to fellow aficionados, then took it home and flew it for the first time, with daughter Bregje, 13, taking video and photos. “She’s the most enthusiastic kiter of my four children,” says Westerink. “I’ve named her official photographer for my First Kites Action Research Team.”

Jan Westerink. The replica Sellers kite makes its very successful maiden flight in the 100th anniversary year of its patenting in America. The scene is Zutphen, Holland.

Bregje Westerink. The replica Sellers kite makes its very successful maiden flight in the 100th anniversary year of its patenting in America. The scene is Zutphen, Holland.

The maiden test flight went off flawlessly. Flown without a bridle and only a rope construction to connect it to the flying line, the kite rose easily in a 10 mile-an-hour wind and flight was stable. “The tube tail nicely corrected the kite in relation to the wind force,” says Westerink. “It was a great sensation to have this big kite with 13-foot wingspan and 54 square feet of surface at the end of my flying line. Sometimes it really pulled, other times it shook a little as the tail corrected the flying angle. Flying was great fun.”

Just who was this Matthew Sellers who designed and patented the unusual kite? Research reveals he was one of the many dozens of people at the turn of the last century who worked obsessively to invent the airplane, a goal achieved by the Wright brothers in 1903.

Born into a rich Kentucky family, Sellers took a Harvard law degree, and then, continuing a childhood fascination with flight, devoted himself to basic aeronautical research. Beginning about 1889, he progressed from balloons and small flying models and kites to wind-tunnel testing of airfoils, then on to designing, building and flying a variety of weight-shifting gliders from which he hung suspended. He corresponded with other notable aviation pioneers such as Langley and Chanute, contributed to technical journals such as Scientific American, and received several patents for his kite and airplane designs.

By 1908 when the kite design Westerink replicated was patented, Sellers had already built several large four-wing gliders with enormous lift. When he added an 8 horsepower Dutheil-Chalmers engine, landing gear, and flight controls to his Quadraplane No. 6, he created a powered aircraft in which he was able to make 180- degree turns and flights up to a quarter mile in length. It was the world’s first functioning aircraft to use retractable landing gear. Its first flight on December 28, 1908 was the earliest powered airplane flight in Kentucky.

Using the family’s Blakemore estate outside Lexington as a home base and working mostly independently, Sellers continued his aviation experiments until an employee was killed by a propeller in 1911. Filled with remorse, Sellers left the state for good, returning only once to visit three decades later. Demonstrating his aircraft in New York in 1914, Sellers himself was seriously injured in a crash. He ceased flying and gradually turned his attention to other endeavors.

But Sellers’ expertise in aeronautics was by now well known and he was appointed to a federal aeronautics commission chaired by the inventor Thomas Edison. Sellers died in 1932 and his achievements were all but forgotten until aviation historians became interested and his family gave his archive to the Smithsonian. His two sons worked with local citizenry to preserve Blakemore as a National Parks historic property. Blakemore subsequently burned down, but a workshop including a wind tunnel in an outbuilding was saved and along with archival documentation eventually found a home in the Aviation Museum of Kentucky in Lexington, where it can be viewed today.

Westerink sums up: “The Sellers kite wasn’t the most beautiful kite I found when searching the not so easily accessible sources on historic kites on the Web, but since I’m interested in unknown ideas from the early builders and experimenters, I feel I have to build their kites. Even if ugly, imperfect, and bad-flying, these kites show the design struggle the early builders went through. Building their kites permits me to experience kite history from a century ago as closely as possible.”