Our country is built on competition: winning and losing defines success in sports, business, and daily life. We can become blinded by winning, sacrificing our family life for business success, or "taking the money" while sacrificing honor and ethics. Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, reminded us of the honor in simply playing the game. His central character, Charlie Brown, the penultimate loser, always came back to play the game again. In almost fifty years, Charlie won one baseball game, never kicked that field goal, and snagged his kite in countless trees.

This is a report on an attempt to measure line tension on various types of kites when in the air, and at various windspeeds, to determine if there were any correlations with size, weight, or type of kite. The results were not as expected.

"…Experimenting with large kites is not without its humorous phases, and a day or two after the experiment with the dummy ‘Jimmy’ and incident occurred which, though ridiculous, well nigh resulted seriously. The same kites that bore the dummy had been sent up about two hundred feet, when the two men who were assisting me went for another kite, leaving me alone at the windlass. Noticing that the rope was in danger of being cut by the cogs, I put on the brake, and passing around to the front, bore down on the rope, which did not appear to be …

In addition to his large, choice collection of kites from around the world, Scott Skinner, president of the Drachen Foundation, has amassed a comprehensive trove of kite art. Included are prints by Japanese masters Hiroshige and Hokusai, paintings, postage stamps, drawings, cartoons, porcelains, enameled pins, emblazoned clothing, photographs, videos and a vast collection of printed material. He also collects kite flying paraphernalia from around the globe, particularly Asia, such as line, winders, tools, and the raw materials used in kite construction.

Between the years 1882 and 1994, a total of 100 patents were issued by the German Patent Office for kites and kite accessories. This averages about one patent per year, approximately the same number of patents issued by the British Patent Office for English patents over a period of years. In contrast, the U.S. Patent Office issued an average of six to seven patents per year from 1886 to 1998, indicating a much greater interest in kiting in America than in those two European countries.

The Chicago Tribune of Sunday last, in an article on the Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas, near that city, mentions the following incident:

There’s something old and new in the wind! Have you glimpsed them out of the corner of your eye, on the kite festival fields, flying in the skies over parks and beaches? Darting, spinning, bee-like butterflies might be a better description of the diamond shapes sparkling in the sunlight, changing their course, flitting here and there like playful butterflies. That all sounds nice and a pretty picture, too, but it’s also an exciting, pulse-pounding experience.

Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters are back in vogue and the Amateur Yacht Research Society enters into the spirit of the 19th century by this appreciation of a book published in 1827, The Aeropleustic Art, by a Bristol schoolmaster who built, patented and drove a kite buggy at 20 miles per hour almost two centuries ago. The volume is virtually unobtainable, as is a second edition published in 1851 retitled A Treatise of the Aeropleustic Art or Buoyant Sails, With a Description of the Charvolent or Kite Carriage.

"I’m immersed in the development of a new kite, and being an obsessive sort of person who can only think about one thing at a time, I just hate interruptions when the lady has fluttered her eyes and the chase is on.

If you love kites and are skilled at photography, how do you put the two together to make a vocation? Nicolas Chorier, 37, of Montpellier, France, faced this question a few years ago. His answer was: aerial kite photography.