fromiscourse the end of the line April 2009

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

APRIL 2009 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4

ON THE COVER: Richard Steiff, maker From the Editor 3 of the Roloplan. For many European enthusiasts, the Roloplan is a Contributors 4 kite they consider just as important as the Hargrave, the Eddy, or the Discourses from the End of the Line Cody. Story on page 75. Story for the Sky 7 JANE D. MARSCHING In Search of the Chinese Kite 14 PETER BOEKELHEIDE Soaring Kite Sugoroku 24 SCOTT SKINNER My Red River Delta Kite Day 29 ROB WHITEHURST Aeropleustics or A Buggy Good Time in Bristol 33 PAUL CHAPMAN September 1989, West Berlin 37 PETER AND ANNE WHITEHEAD The Flexible Happening 43 DOUWE JAN JOUSTRA Life and Hope 54 SIM SARAK AND CHEANG YARIN Flying Expanded Polystyrene Gliders as 57 GARY HINZE Energy and the Possible Applications of Kites Preface and Background DAVE LANG 65 NIST/TIP White Paper 66 ALI FUJINO, DAVE LANG, KEVIN MAHAFFY Kite Power for the Weekend Warrior 72 JOE HADZICKI Richard Steiff The Genial Kite Maker WALTER DIEM 75 Original Replicas 82 WOLFRAM WANNRICH & WERNER AHLGRIM

Tethered Flights: Drachen Foundation Musings En Vuelo Libre (In Free Flight) 86 SCOTT SKINNER The Way We Were 87 SCOTT SKINNER

2 STORY FOR THE SKY Jane D. Marsching

“The eye sees what it has been given to see by concrete circumstances, and the imagination reproduces what, by some related gift, it is able to make live.” – Flannery O’Connor

Blue Hill Observatory in Milton, MA, first built in 1885, is home to the oldest continuous weather record in the United States. A hill 635.05 feet above sea level, Blue Hill Observatory is also the site of some of the earliest and most significant kite meteorology experiments in the United States. In the balloons and kites began to be used by the US Weather Bureau to gather climate data from the upper atmosphere. Alexander McAdie started kite experiments at Blue Hill in 1885 for the purpose of studying static electricity in the sky. In 1893 Australian inventor Lawrence Hargrave successfully flew his first cellular or . Hargrave, who had in his early life been an explorer, cartographer, astronomical observer, and inventor of shoes that walk on water, [1] became in his thirties an investigator

Jane D. Marsching of all things aeronautical. He believed passionately (unlike the who were patent crazy) in the importance of Test Site: Hargrave triple cell box kite failed experiment from the 1890s remade in 2008 research being open for the benefit of all and flying over Blue Hill Observatory, March 2008. was passionately anti-patent: “The life of a patentee, he wrote, was spent ‘in a ceaseless war with infringers’. Any ‘loot’ was merely ‘squandered’ – ‘broadcast among shoals of sharks’. More importantly, patents served to ‘block progress’ by taxing future development.” [2] His many papers included detailed sketches and information to help other early aeronautical inventors to solve the

7 perplexing problems of human powered flight. On the 12th of November, 1894, he flew four linked box kites that lifted him sixteen feet into the air. His sturdy box kite was adopted by Blue Hill Observatory and the US Weather Bureau as the standard design for their weather kites and continued to be used for many years. The history of kites for research continued at Blue Hill Observatory through the 1920s. With the advent of soundings taken from , the last kite station was closed in 1933. [3] A new history of kites for low altitude wind appreciation, educational purposes, for vegetation research, SSPL / Science Museum aesthetic pleasure, and more has begun in Lawrence Hargrave with his triple-box the 21st century with the Blue Hill kite arrangement, 1898. Observatory Science Center.

My ongoing project, Arctic Listening Post, the dedicated observers and staff, each day I has explored our past, present, and would drive up the road to the old building imagined future human impact on climate past the usual roadside trees into a more change. I’ve created images based on data alpine landscape littered with scrub pines, from digital elevation models of glaciers, choke cherry, cedar juniper, and grey videos from webcam images from the birch. The view of the surrounding eastern NOAA’s north pole webcam, and Massachusetts landscape stretches for animations of data from weather buoys in miles. On low haze days (see Blue Hill’s the northern seas. The work seeks to make “Haze Cam” at http://www.hazecam.net/ visible the story of data. The scientific bluehill.html, which tracks the effects of air community is awash with studies of the pollution on visibility) observers note in effects of climate change from their daily discussion that they can see for paleoclimatology, to glaciology, to more than 65 miles. oceanography, and so much more. All these studies get filtered through policy reports, The rich history of the Observatory became scientific journals, and the mass media, but the jumping off point for my work they end up on our plates as dry reports, there. The ongoing activities at the difficult to consume and near impossible to observatory – air pollution monitoring, see with any clarity. By taking this data, its constant surface observations of all weather histories, current crises, and future characteristics, careful archiving of data, probabilities, I hope to reinstate its and daily weather bulletins – all provided narrative, give a fuller picture of the impact me with rich resources for interweaving a of data on our lives, and create a sense of consideration of our human effect on the wonder and urgency. climate with the history and landscape of the Observatory. In collaboration with the I became an artist in residence at Blue Hill Blue Hill Program Director, Don Observatory in the winter of 2008. Inspired McCasland, who has a rich and skilled by the amazing history and ongoing work of history with kite building and flying, I built

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Don flying Test Site: Hargrave triple cell box kite failed experiment from the 1890s remade in 2008.

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Test Site: Hargrave triple cell box kite failed experiment from the 1890s remade in 2008.

10 a kite that is a model of a failed experiment are too complex to encompass, the situation of Hargrave’s in the years that he was testing too dire to contemplate. Lewis Hyde’s various kinds of box kites. The version I thoughts on art as a transformative vision of chose was a triple cell kite, which has close the future are central to the kinds of efforts visual associations with the Wright Brothers we can make to bring a sustaining sense of early flights, as well as more ordinary wonder, hope, and possibility to our future modern day gliders. The kite we made in in the face of climate change. silver and blue is a salute to the innovation and sense of wonder that Hargrave The Hargrave triple cell box kite failed possessed. experiment from the 1890s remade in 2008 is a gift for the site, observers, staff, and Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift: Imagination climate of Blue Hill Observatory. Can one and the Erotic Life of Property travels the have a relationship with a site just like one worlds of anthropology, literature, poetry, has with people? Can one consider the art, economics, philosophy, and psychology climate a living being? Can we afford not to discover the ways in which art can be a to? On the spring equinox of 2008 I read a gift to the maker, the audience, the world. story to the site on a cloudy afternoon. I The point that inspired my work in the read the central chapter of Jules Verne’s project Test Site is this: Journey to the Center of the Earth. What gift can one give the sky that from its vantage A work of art breeds in the imagination point sees everything? Perhaps a story of the of the viewer. In this way the things that it can never see. In the passages I imagination creates the future… The read to the sky, the main characters, imagination can create the future only Lidenbrock and Axel, come at last after their if its products are brought over into the long travails to the absolute center of the real… Without the imagination we can earth: do no more than spin the future out of the logic of the present…[4] At first I could hardly see anything. My eyes, unaccustomed to the light, If, as the November 2007 Intergovernmental quickly closed. When I was able to Panel on Climate Change’s report states, we reopen them, I stood more stupefied have moved from a state of prevention to even than surprised. the need for adaptation to the new world wrought by anthropogenic warming, then “The sea!” I cried.… how can we stay with the long (thousands of years) effort – both great and tiny, both I gazed upon these wonders in silence. eons and moments – in the making that is Words failed me to express my required? We have had a feeling that feelings. I felt as if I was in some climate change can be stopped; our nascent distant planet Uranus or Neptune – partial understanding of it as a change in and in the presence of phenomena of temperature or precipitation needs to which my terrestrial experience gave become an interdisciplinary collaborative me no cognisance. For such novel global wisdom about its pervasive effect on sensations, new words were wanted; all aspects of our planet, population, and and my imagination failed to supply culture. But we are tired of it already. We’ve them. I gazed, I thought, I admired, changed our lightbulbs, we’ve cut back on with a stupefaction mingled with a water bottles – enough already! The facts certain amount of fear.

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Jane D. Marsching reads Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth to the sky at Blue Hill Observatory on the spring equinox 2008.

12 This moment of discovery of something variations – launch your kite in a entirely unknown and magical was my gift subtly modulating current to the site, a story of the center of the earth, Tether your thoughts to earthly something which the sky cannot see. concerns Remember that clouds obscure the sun In early April Don McCasland, John Nevins, Remember that the stars continue to and I attached sound equipment to the kite shine in the daylight hours line and launched at sunset the Hargrave Never use wire for a kite string triple cell box kite failed experiment from Never fly a kite during a full moon or the 1890s remade in 2008. With filmmaker anytime in November—unless you live Noah Stout, I videotaped the kite’s flight in the southern hemisphere in which through the sky above the observatory, case you should avoid April capturing the flight of a flock of geese, the Never fly your kite in the rain hovering of the kite over stands of pines, Don’t fly your kite near electrical wires and the buffeting of the cells in the varying Avoid trees-they eat kites winds. The sound equipment broadcasted Do not fly near airports through a small microphone attached to an While running to launch your kite MP3 player a recording of my reading of the avoid holes in the ground, gullies or Verne story to the sky. Now, the upper slopes, as well as broken glass or any atmosphere could hear a science fiction other debris on the field imagining of the center of the earth. In the Do not fasten yourself to your flying final video that documents this flight, the line sound is a recording of the sky hearing the Avoid flying your kite in city streets story read to it, filled with sounds of the Do not climb high trees or rooftops to wind, of the flapping of the kite nylon, and rescue your kite the singing of the string in the gusts. Do not read The Kite Runner Do not watch any Fellini films Another similar kite project was part of a Wind is your friend up to a point live kite flight performance at the Excuse me while I kiss the sky Observatory on May Day 2008. Don McCasland and I designed another kite with Don’s graceful kite took some time to get up colors of the hilltop and sky, which carried in the air; the winds took their time picking sound equipment that broadcasted to the up enough. Finally a wind came in from the audience below on the ground a sound east, and the kite flew up and delivered recording by author and artist Mark Alice Mark’s text to the sky. Durant. This wry poetic spoken word performance interwove facts about kiting [1] http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/? with personal narratives: irn=128851&collection=Lawrence+Hargrave

[2] L Hargrave to Illustrirte Aeronautische Mittheilungen, 28 June Some tips on untethered flight: 1903, Hargrave papers: folder no 113, vol 4. Quoted by Tim Sherratt, ‘Remembering Lawrence Hargrave’, in Graeme Davison and Kimberley Webber (editors), Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Upon launching any object towards Powerhouse Museum and its precursors, 1880-2005, Powerhouse Museum in association with UNSW Press, Sydney 2005, pp. the heavens be aware of the limits of 174-185. your imagination and provide the [3] http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2006/ corresponding length of string alm06apr2.htm To avoid boredom a kite desires [4] Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of steadiness with occasional minor Property. New York: Vintage Books, 1979, p. 193-194.

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