Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: August 31, 1998
Article Type: Journal

At the turn of the last century, meteorology became an important new science around the world and kites played a major role in the compilation of data for this work. A major research center was the Blue Hill Observatory at Milton, Massachusetts, established in 1885 on the highest point of land near Boston.

Blue Hill was set up and financed by Abbott Lawrence Rotch (pronounced "roach"), a New England Brahmin married to a lineal descendant of Thomas Jefferson. It soon became associated with Harvard’s Astronomical Observatory and its observations and investigations were published in the university’s annals.

On Blue Hill in 1894, the first meteorological instrument able to record graphically and continuously was lifted by kites and the possibility of obtaining data simultaneously in the free air, by means of kites, and on the ground was demonstrated. A kite supplied by William Eddy, a Bayonne, New Jersey, inventor, was used to make the first sounding. Eddy patented the deltoid, tail-less kite, a variation on the ancient Malay kite, in his name and his invention is today recognized as one of the nine generic, or basic, kites.

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