To the best of present knowledge, the word “kite” stems from the Old English “cyta,” meaning a bird of prey of the hawk family and distinguished by long pointed wings and a forked tail. The bird was also called a “glade” in England and was fairly common there during the Middle Ages.

It doesn’t seem possible, but Dr. Devinder Pal Singh Sehgal of Chandigarh, India, has managed to make kites so small they pass through the eye of a needle. The kites measure 2.1 by 2.1mm (.08274th of an inch), he says. Dr. Sehgal claims his kites set a record for tiny. Any competition? As Ali Fujino, administrator of the Drachen Foundation, says of this curiosity, “I love this stuff. India needs more cable TV. These people have too much time.”

More than might be imagined, it is a commonplace for there to be conflicting claims regarding the primacy of invention in the field of kites, flight…and all inventions. These contests of authorship tend to follow a pattern and reflect attitudes reminiscent of the information recently presented by Istvan Bodoczky, who has raised a question concerning the origin of the Sled kite. The l904 Hungarian ethnographic journal he enters into evidence includes a description, accompanied by a drawing, of a “Buda Jewish kite” remarkably similar in its appearance to William A.

Terrorism in the Philippines has forced Orly Ongkingco of Manila to temporarily halt his research on kites throughout the archipelago. Ongkingco was the recipient of a grant from the Drachen Foundation to document the broad-spectrum kite culture of his country—the various types of kites, their makers, raw materials, tools, history, mythology. He was not only charged with doing written research but also with making photographs, as well as collecting choice examples of kites.

Hashimoto was born in Hikifune, Mukojima, Tokyo, in l904. When he was four years old, his family moved to an area behind the Shimotani Shrine in Ueno. Having been born into a family of kitemakers, Teizo began to help with the family business while still in elementary school. While he learned the tricks of the trade from his father Tomekichi and his stepgrandfather Fusakichi as he grew older, it was through his own concerted efforts that he secured his place as the third generation of this traditional Edo kitemaking family.

“There is a fascination in collecting kite stamps and first day covers.” The speaker is Scott Skinner, president of the Drachen Foundation and a leading collector of kites and kite memorabilia. “You have a huge variety of types of kites, you have the puzzle of understanding the motivation for using a kite as the image, and you have the pleasure of the unexpected— of finding a kite picture where you don’t expect to find it. For a collector, it has all the lure of the hunt.”

Jim Day is one of the stalwarts of the Seattle kite scene. “He’s an example of a person who finds kites a perfect focus for his very bright, single focus personality,” says Ali Fujino of the Drachen Foundation. “He gives, doesn’t take. He is really interested in kites and kite people. He’s the all-knowing guru and a great resource.”

We flew kites in the Easter season, but that often meant for as much as two months prior to Easter. Since I was in the city of Port au Prince, where there was little open space, we flew from our rooftops; most houses are one- or two-story and flat-roofed. Whole families flew kites from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. There may well have been 25,000 people flying kites at once.

It is very remarkable how people pass by good inventions and good ideas and won’t take to them. Kites, for instance, have been known for hundreds of years. Everyone knows of them the world over, yet till a few years ago no one thought of putting them to any use. When I say no one, I do not mean that exactly, for Franklin and others, of course, used kites for meteorological experiments; Pocock drew a little carriage along with them, and several others suggested their use for life-saving at sea.

Actress Lauren Bacall once said, “Imagination is the highest kite that one can fly,” and nothing prompts flights of fancy like the sight of a soaring kite. To fly a kite is to shake hands with the wind. Kites are great unifiers, cutting across specious social boundaries with a flick of their whimsical tails. From the kite’s point of view, all God’s children have strings. We got philosophical with some ground crew members at Redondo Beach at a July 2001 gathering by the Sunshine Kite Co. Slavka and Jan Rehacek, Buena Park (biplane kite, $20):