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PrintCollection Name: Drachen Foundation Collection
Collection Number: 2332
Post Type: Book
This item was entered by Matthew Sutton. They assume full responsibility for all content.
Artist or Author: Clive Hart
Creation Year: 1967
Length: 0.00
Height: 0.00
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ISBN: 0-911858-40-7 Language: English Description: In his foreword to Kites, Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, the noted aeronautical historian, points out that an authoritative history of the kite has never before appeared, and that kites have seldom been given the serious treatment they merit as a branch of aviation. Professor Clive Hart puts the record straight in this survey of 2,500 years of the kite's history, which concentrates on the development of the technologically advanced Western kite.
Kites have been used for military signaling, for fishing, as transports for airborne firework displays, as probers of clouds for the secrets of lightning, as aerial tugs to haul horseless carriages across land and boats across water, as flying observation posts for soldiers in battle, for carrying men, for laying torpedoes, for providing gunnery targets, for life-saving at sea, for aerial photography, for pamphlet raids, for meteorology: the list is almost inexhaustible. Their most important role, of course, was as the prototype of the airplane wing: the kite may, in fact, be regarded as a tethered glider.
Although powered flight has resulted in the relegation of the kite more and more to its time-honored sporting and recreational uses, technological advances continue to be made. For instance, only withing the last few years, a "fleep"-- a flying jeep that can work from short, rough landing surfaces and lift loads of nearly half a ton-- has been developed.
Although Professor Hart has written a carefully documented study of the more serious aspects of kites, he has not overlooked their universal appeal as toys; the beauty, elegance and imaginativeness of their design; the part played by kites in myth, magic, and ritual; and the extraordinarily ingenious uses to which kites have been put, particularly in the Orient. Lavishly illustrated with examples of kites taken from all over the world and from all periods, his book should prove a delight to everyone who has ever succeeded in getting a kite aloft.
210 pages
Geographic: United Kingdom, United States
Materials: Paper
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