When did Benjamin Franklin supposedly perform his kite experiment?
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using a iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, 1752, Franklin may possibly have conducted his well-known kite experiment in Philadelphia, successfully extracting sparks from a cloud. Franklin described the experiment in the "Pennsylvania Gazette" on October 19, 1752, without mentioning that he himself had performed it. This account was read to the Royal Society on December 21 and printed as such in the "Philosophical Transactions". Joseph Priestley published an account with additional details in his 1767 "History and Present Status of Electricity". Franklin was careful to stand on an insulator, keeping dry under a roof to avoid the danger of electric shock. Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Russia, were indeed electrocuted in performing lightning experiments during the months immediately following Franklin's experiment.
Owen Beattie
In June 1981, Beattie began the 1845–48 Franklin Expedition Forensic Anthropology Project (FEFAP) when he and his team of researchers and field assistants travelled from Edmonton to King William Island, traversing the island's western coast as Franklin's men did 132 years before. FEFAP hoped to find artifacts and skeletal remains in order to use modern forensics to establish identities and causes of death among the lost 129. In June 1982, a team made up of Beattie; Walt Kowall, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Alberta; Arne Carlson, an archaeology and geography student from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia; and Arsien Tungilik, an Inuk student and field assistant, were flown to the west coast of King William Island, where they retraced some of the steps of Sir Francis McClintock in 1859 and Frederick Schwatka in 1878–79. Discoveries during this expedition included the remains of between six and fourteen men in the vicinity of McClintock's "boat place" and artifacts including a complete boot sole fitted with makeshift cleats for better traction. After returning to Edmonton in 1982 and learning of the lead-level findings from the 1981 expedition, Beattie struggled to find a cause. Possibilities included the lead solder used to seal the expedition's food tins, other food containers lined with lead foil, food colouring, tobacco products, pewter tableware, and lead-wicked candles. He came to suspect that the problems of lead poisoning compounded by the effects of scurvy could have been lethal for the Franklin crew. However, because skeletal lead might reflect lifetime exposure rather than exposure limited to the voyage, Beattie's theory could be tested only by forensic examination of preserved soft tissue as opposed to bone. Beattie decided to examine the graves of the buried crewmen on Beechey Island. Beattie collaborated with writer John G. Geiger on a book about the researches, Frozen In Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition, which became a best-seller in Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany, and has been published in many other countries. The Globe and Mail hailed the book as a "Canadian classic".
John Bevis
Watson and Bevis corresponded extensively with Benjamin Franklin and his group of Philadelphia experimenters and they jointly:
William Abner Eddy
William Abner Eddy (January 28, 1850 – December 26, 1909) was an American accountant and journalist famous for his photographic and meteorological experiments with kites. The scientific significance of Eddy's improvements to kite-flying was short-lived, due to the advent of Lawrence Hargrave's rectangular box kites. Nevertheless, in the year following Eddy's death, a train of ten Eddy kites reaching an altitude of set a height record for several years.
William A. Eddy was born to a wealthy family in New York City. His father was a reverend. William's experience with kites started at an early age: When he was 15, he successfully tied a lantern to a hexagonal kite. After graduation from the University of Chicago he returned to New York, where he would soon work as an accountant for the New York Herald.
Experiments and Observations on Electricity
King Louis XV honored Franklin after seeing some of the electrical experiments done in the royal palace at St. Germain near Paris, France. However physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–1770), a skeptic who had published his own theory on electricity, declared Franklin's ideas were wrong. He claimed in 1753 that Franklin's lightning rod was not only dangerous but useless and would attract lightning bolts to wooden buildings, causing them to be hit more often. Franklin in time proved to the scientific community that his lightning rod invention not only was a protective device, but it also served as a preventive way to divert destructive lightning bolts away from hitting buildings.
Early flying machines
The Frenchman Gaston Biot developed a man-lifting kite in 1868. Later, in 1880, Biot demonstrated to the French Society for Aerial Navigation a kite based on an open-ended cone, similar to a windsock but attached to a flat surface. The man-carrying kite was developed a stage further in 1894 by Captain Baden Baden-Powell, brother of Lord Baden-Powell, who strung a chain of hexagonal kites on a single line. A significant development came in 1893 when the Australian Lawrence Hargrave invented the box kite and some man-carrying experiments were carried out both in Australia and in the United States. On Dec. 27, 1905, Neil MacDearmid was carried aloft in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, Canada by a large box kite named the Frost King, designed by Alexander Graham Bell.
Kite
In 1752 Benjamin Franklin published an account of a kite experiment to prove that lightning was caused by electricity.
Kite applications
Kites have been used for scientific purposes, such as Benjamin Franklin's famous experiment proving that lightning is electricity. Kites were the precursors to aircraft, and were instrumental in the development of early flying craft. Alexander Graham Bell experimented with very large man-lifting kites, as did the Wright brothers and Lawrence Hargrave. Kites had an historical role in lifting scientific instruments to measure atmospheric conditions for weather forecasting. Francis Ronalds and William Radcliffe Birt described a very stable kite at Kew Observatory as early as 1847 that was trialled for the purpose of supporting self-registering meteorological instruments at height.
History of hang gliding
Now thousands around the world were interested in hang gliding. However, proper flight schools and uniform training guidelines did not exist. One learned the flying predominantly autodidactic. As late as autumn 1973, Mike Harker and fellow American Walt Nielsen founded the world's first alpine hang-gliding school in Scuol in the Engadine Valley, Switzerland. They taught on the ski slopes sitting on a swing seat and sking down the slopes to gain speed and lift off. They trained many of the first kite flying pioneers who later founded their own flying schools. Almost everywhere in the world in 1974, kite makers began series production of Rogallo gliders. The first-generation hang gliders initially had less than 80 degrees nose angle and a sink rate of over 4 m / sec. These aircraft were, however, like the Australian and American role models, still unexplored and very dangerous. Flutter and spiral dives as well as mechanical breaks were the most frequent causes of accidents, which often resulted in death. The second generation in the kite construction ushered the American Roy Haggard in the spring of 1975 with his sensational "Dragonfly" one. He brought with the Dragonfly most of the improvements that ever existed in an aircraft in the kite history. From March 12 to 23, 1975, Austrian Sepp Himberger organized the first unofficial World Championship in Kössen / Tyrol. His invitation was followed by 300 hang glider pilots from all over the world who demonstrated their skills in 3-7 minute flights. The winner in the combination of time and spot landing was the American Dave Cronk with his Cumulus 5 b.Now thousands around the world were interested in hang gliding. However, proper flight schools and uniform training guidelines did not exist. One learned the flying predominantly autodidactic. As late as autumn 1973, Mike Harker and fellow American Walt Nielsen founded the world's first alpine hang-gliding school in Scuol in the Engadine Valley, Switzerland. They taught on the ski slopes sitting on a swing seat and sking down the slopes to gain speed and lift off. They trained many of the first hang gliding pioneers who later founded their own flying schools. Almost everywhere in the world in 1974, kite makers began series production of Rogallo gliders. The first-generation hang gliders initially had less than 80 degrees nose angle and a sink rate of over 4 m / sec. These aircraft were, however, like the Australian and American role models, still unexplored and very dangerous. Flutter and spiral dives as well as mechanical breaks were the most frequent causes of accidents, which often resulted in death. The second generation in the kite construction ushered the American Roy Haggard in the spring of 1975 with his sensational "Dragonfly" one. He brought with the Dragonfly most of the improvements that ever existed in an aircraft in the kite history. From March 12 to 23, 1975, Austrian Sepp Himberger organized the first unofficial World Championship in Kössen / Tyrol. His invitation was followed by 300 hang glider pilots from all over the world who demonstrated their skills in 3-7 minute flights. The winner in the combination of time and spot landing was the American Dave Cronk with his Cumulus 5 b.
Man-lifting kite
The Rogallo wing was invented by aerospace engineer Francis Rogallo and was the first kite to be developed with the assistance of wind tunnel testing. NASA incorporated stiffened Rogallo wings into man-lifting kites towed by ground and aero vehicles and often let in hang glide mode. Many of the kited men (eight) were released from the kited format into gliding controlled flight back to ground. The man-lifting kite and glider program of 1961 forward also produced the Paresev and gave a wing that was to be used in popular hang gliding.
History of electromagnetic theory
Up to the time of Franklin's historic kite experiment, the identity of the electricity developed by rubbing and by electrostatic machines (frictional electricity) with lightning had not been generally established. Dr. Wall, Abbot Nollet, Hauksbee, Stephen Gray and John Henry Winkler had indeed suggested the resemblance between the phenomena of "electricity" and "lightning", Gray having intimated that they only differed in degree. It was doubtless Franklin, however, who first proposed tests to determine the sameness of the phenomena. In a letter to Peter Comlinson of London, on 19 October 1752, Franklin, referring to his kite experiment, wrote,
Blossom Kite Festival
Sponsored by the Smithsonian National Associate Program (see S. Dillon Ripley Center) and the NASM, the first annual Smithsonian Kite Carnival (later referred to as the Kite Festival) took place on the National Mall on March 25, 1967. Individuals could compete in contests with homemade kites as well as ready-made ones. The festival also included kite-making workshops led by Paul Garber, a lecture series, and a special display of kites made by Garber and his wife.
Aviation in the pioneer era
In North America, the Canadian-American Aerial Experiment Association was founded by Alexander Graham Bell, who had made a number of earlier experiments with tetrahedral kites, and John McCurdy and his friend Frederick Walker Baldwin, two recent engineering graduates of the University of Toronto, on 30 September 1907. The AEA produced a number of fundamentally similar biplane designs, greatly influenced by the Wright's work, and these were flown with increasing success during 1908. Baldwin flew their first design, "Red Wing" on 12 March 1908, flying 97 m (319 ft) before crashing and being damaged beyond repair: its successor, "White Wing, equipped with ailerons, made three flights in May, the best of 310 m (1,017 ft), before being destroyed in a crash. On 4 July 1908 their next aircraft, the "June Bug" piloted by Glenn Curtiss, won the "Scientific American" trophy for the first officially observed one kilometer flight in North America. After the AEA's disbandment at the end of March 1909, one of its American members went on to start a growing US-based aviation firm.
Benjamin Loxley
Benjamin Loxley, also known as Benjamin Lockley (December 20, 1720 – October 10, 1801) was a prominent Philadelphia master-builder and carpenter-architect in the American Colonial Period. He was also a well known American patriot army leader. He collaborated with Benjamin Franklin on some of Franklin's electrical experiments, including the kite experiment when Franklin used his house key.
Timeline of United States inventions (1946–1991)
The Rogallo wing is a flexible type of airfoil composed of two partial conic surfaces with both cones pointing forward. Neither a kite, glider, or a type of aircraft, the Rogallo wing is most often seen in toy kites, but has been used to construct spacecraft parachutes during preliminary testing for NASA's "Gemini program" in the early 1960s, dirigible parachutes, ultralight powered aircraft like the trike, as well as hang gliders. Before the end of 1948, American aeronautical engineer Francis Rogallo had succeeded in inventing the first fully successful flexible-wing kite that he called the 'Flexi-Kite'. A patent was applied for in 1948 and granted in 1951. His wife, Gertrude Rogallo, also made a significant impact upon the invention, having sewed the fabric into the required dimensions that used household items like kitchen curtains. Rogallo believed that flexible wings provided more stability than fixed surfaces, leading to an elimination of rigid spars during flight. Because of this, Rogallo's concepts are seen as classics examples of purity and efficiency in aviation.
Early flying machines
Balloons were by then in use for both meteorology and military observation. Balloons can only be used in light winds, while kites can only be used in stronger winds. The American Samuel Franklin Cody, working in England, realised that the two types of craft between them allowed operation over a wide range of weather conditions. He developed Hargrave's basic design, adding additional lifting surfaces to create powerful man-lifting systems using multiple kites on a single line. Cody made many demonstrations of his system and would later sell four of his "war kite" systems to the Royal Navy. His kites also found use in carrying meteorological instruments aloft and he was made a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society. In 1905, Sapper Moreton of the British Army's balloon section was lifted by a kite at Aldershot under Cody's supervision. In 1906, Cody was appointed Chief Instructor in Kiting at the Army School of Ballooning in Aldershot. He soon also joined the newly established Army Balloon Factory at Farnborough and continued developing his war kites for the British Army. In his own time, he developed a manned "glider-kite" which was launched on a tether like a kite and then released to glide freely. In 1907, Cody next fitted an aircraft engine to a modified unmanned "power-kite", the precursor to his later aeroplanes, and flew it inside the Balloon Shed, along a wire suspended from poles, before the Prince and Princess of Wales. The British Army officially adopted his war kites for their Balloon Companies in 1908.
James Rumsey
The demonstration took place twenty years before Robert Fulton constructed and demonstrated the "Clermont". The idea of jet propulsion was not Rumsey's alone. Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782) originated the idea of propelling watercraft in that way. In the summer of 1785, while Rumsey and his assistant Joseph Barnes were in the process of assembling his boat, Benjamin Franklin, on board a ship from France, wrote of propelling a boat by water jet. This coincidence has sometimes led people to believe Rumsey got the idea from Franklin. Indeed, if Franklin had wanted to make such a claim it likely would have been accepted, but he did not, and became one of Rumsey's supporters.
William Abner Eddy
It seems that Eddy's interest in kites was renewed when he learned about recent advances. In 1883, Douglas Archibald used kites to measure differences in wind velocity. Alexander McAdie repeated Benjamin Franklin's kite experiments with an electrometer. In 1887, Eddy heard of Woodbridge Davis' maneuverable kites. Based on accounts of tailless diamond kites common in Java, he tried to fill in the missing details. In standard diamond kites the tail was needed for stabilization, but was problematic when chaining several kites in order to reach higher altitudes. He added a bow in the cross spar and a hole at the crossing of the sticks.
Lightning rod
The principle of the lightning rod was first detailed by Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania in 1749, who in the subsequent years developed his invention for household application (published in 1753) and further improvements towards a reliable system around 1760.
Satire
Ebenezer Cooke (1665–1732), author of "The Sot-Weed Factor" (1708), was among the first American colonialists to write literary satire. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and others followed, using satire to shape an emerging nation's culture through its sense of the ridiculous.
Kite applications
Kite yachting may have started with Benjamin Franklin's pond pull. English Channel crossing.
Military radio antenna kites
The first kite used by the United States Army Signal Corps specifically for raising an antenna was designed and built by Sergeant Thomas I. King, Signal Corps Company A, while stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1905. The “King” kite was large, 7 feet high and 5 feet wide, made of 15 yards of white Japanese silk on a bamboo frame, and weighed less than 2 pounds. Similar to Silas J. Conyne's kite of 1902, it had a diamond shape with a squared-off top and bottom, keel, and large opening in the center to give it some of the stability of a box kite. It was used either singly or in trains of 2 to 4 kites or, on less windy days, in conjunction with a balloon to provide extra lift.
John Henry Pepper
The crowd were not impressed by the efforts of Pepper and his team, laughing and jeering at their failed attempts. Some members of the audience even joined in by trying to launch the kite themselves. The newspapers were also unkind with the "Warwick Examiner and Times" describing the event as being a "pseudo-scientific fiasco". Pepper felt very badly treated by fellow scientists and the general public and in a letter written to "The Brisbane Courier" dated 27 May 1882 he stated:
"My experiment in Queensland was received with such derision and insults that in the face of those hard steely railings I shall leave to others the honour and expense of trying to do good by gently persuading the clouds to drop fatness."
Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania
Benjamin Franklin would often travel to Bensalem to visit his friend, Joseph Galloway, at Growden Mansion. At the time, the Galloway family owned all of present-day Bensalem Township. A local legend maintains that Franklin performed his famous kite-flying experiment in Bensalem, at the mansion, to prove that lightning was the same as static electricity. (The broader consensus is that Benjamin Franklin flew his kite closer to his home in Philadelphia.)
Kite experiment
Speculations of Jean-Antoine Nollet had led to the issue of the electrical nature of lightning being posed as a prize question at Bordeaux in 1749. In 1750, it was the subject of public discussion in France, with a dissertation of Denis Barberet receiving a prize in Bordeaux; Barberet proposed a cause in line with the triboelectric effect. The same year, Franklin reversed his previous skepticism of electrical lightning's attraction to high points. The physicist Jacques de Romas also wrote a mémoire with similar ideas that year, and later defended them as independent of Franklin's.
Thomas-François Dalibard
Dalibard, who at the suggestion of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, translated Franklin's "Experiments and Observations on Electricity" into French, performed Franklin's proposed experiment using a 40-foot-tall metal rod at Marly-la-Ville on 10 May 1752. It is said that Dalibard used wine bottles to ground the pole, and he successfully extracted electricity from a low cloud. It is not known whether Franklin ever performed his proposed experiment.
Samuel Franklin Cody
Samuel Franklin Cowdery (later known as Samuel Franklin Cody; 6 March 1867 – 7 August 1913, born Davenport, Iowa, USA) was a Wild West showman and early pioneer of manned flight. He is most famous for his work on the large kites known as "Cody War-Kites", that were used by the British in World War I as a smaller alternative to balloons for artillery spotting. He was also the first man to fly an aeroplane in Britain, on 16 October 1908. A flamboyant showman, he was often confused with Buffalo Bill Cody, whose surname he took when young.
Samuel Franklin Cody
Financed by his shows, Cody significantly developed Lawrence Hargrave's double-cell box kite to increase its lifting power, especially by adding wings on either side. He also developed a sophisticated system of flying multiple kites up a single line, which was capable of ascending to many thousands of feet or of carrying several men in a gondola. He patented his design in 1901, and it became known as the Cody kite.
Military radio antenna kites
The British Navy experimented with kite raising antennae on the "HMS Good Hope" in 1903, using a box kite designed by Samuel Franklin Cody. A 300-foot kite raised antenna increased their radio range from 60 or 70 miles to 110 miles. The United States Navy conducted kite antenna experiments on the torpedo boats "USS Stringham" and "USS Bailey" in 1911.
Fixed-wing aircraft
Kites have been used for scientific purposes, such as Benjamin Franklin's famous experiment proving that lightning is electricity. Kites were the precursors to the traditional aircraft, and were instrumental in the development of early flying craft. Alexander Graham Bell experimented with very large man-lifting kites, as did the Wright brothers and Lawrence Hargrave. Kites had a historical role in lifting scientific instruments to measure atmospheric conditions for weather forecasting.
Box kite
The box kite was invented in 1893 by Lawrence Hargrave, an English born Australian, as part of his attempt to develop a manned flying machine. Hargrave linked several of his box kites (Hargrave cells) together, creating sufficient lift for him to fly some 16 ft (4.9 m) off the ground. A winged development of this kite is known as the Cody kite following its development by Samuel Franklin Cody. Military uses also involved a kite/radio transmitter combination issued to pilots during World War II for use in liferafts.
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin was, along with his contemporary Leonhard Euler, the only major scientist who supported Christiaan Huygens's wave theory of light, which was basically ignored by the rest of the scientific community. In the 18th century Newton's corpuscular theory was held to be true; only after Young's well-known slit experiment in 1803 were most scientists persuaded to believe Huygens's theory.
Man-lifting kite
After the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903, the development of kites designed to lift heavy weights continued, but interest in designs specifically for lifting humans declined.
Fluid theory of electricity
Franklin was also the first person to suggest that lightning was in fact electricity. Franklin suggested that lightning was just a larger version of the small sparks that appeared between two charged objects. He therefore predicted that lightning could be shaped and directed by using a pointed conductor. This was the basis for his famous kite experiment.
Aircraft
The forerunner of the fixed-wing aircraft is the kite. Whereas a fixed-wing aircraft relies on its forward speed to create airflow over the wings, a kite is tethered to the ground and relies on the wind blowing over its wings to provide lift. Kites were the first kind of aircraft to fly, and were invented in China around 500 BC. Much aerodynamic research was done with kites before test aircraft, wind tunnels, and computer modelling programs became available.
Military radio antenna kites
In 1915 Adjutant General of Massachusetts Charles H. Cole, after hearing that the German ship "SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich" had good results using kites to suspend a radio antenna, decided to experiment with kite supported antennae himself. He asked Samuel F. Perkins, a manufacturer of man lifting kites, to assist with the tests at the July maneuvers of the Massachusetts National Guard. Perkins' original configuration, four kites in a chain with an antenna leading from the ground to some point on the kites' tether, swayed up and down considerably, causing the antenna to vary in length, and making tuning difficult. This had been a problem since kites were used for raising antennae, and had all but forced their abandonment after the early experimental years. Perkins was able to solve the problem easily by attaching the antenna at a height corresponding to the kites' lowest position when swaying normally. The antenna itself acted as a tether and kept the kite's string from rising between the point of attachment and the ground. The kite was still able to rise and fall, but only the part of the string between the antenna and the kite itself could rise, and the antenna remained a constant length. The tests were considered a success, and messages sent using a field wireless set with the kite antenna were heard 150 miles away, where the same set could transmit only 25 miles normally.
Wright Flyer
In 1942 the Smithsonian Institution, under a new secretary, Charles Abbot, published a list of 35 Curtiss modifications to the "Aerodrome" and a retraction of its long-held claims for the craft. Abbot went on to list 4 regrets including the role the Institution played in supporting unsuccessful defendants in patent litigation by the Wrights, misinformation about modifications made to the Aerodrome after "Wright Flyer"s first flight and public statements attributing the "first aeroplane capable of sustained free flight with a man" to Secretary Langley. The entry in the 1942 Annual Report of Smithsonian Institution begins with the statement "It is everywhere acknowledged that the Wright brothers were the first to make sustained flights in a heavier-than-air machine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903" and closes with a promise that "Should Dr. Wright decide to deposit the plane ... it would be given the highest place of honor which it is due"
Windsurfing
In 1964, during a discussion on water sports, RAND Corporation aeronautical engineer Jim Drake and his former Rockwell boss Fred Payne, discussed options for creating a wind-powered water-ski which would allow Payne to travel on the Potomac River. That night they developed the idea of a kite-powered surfboard. On later reflection, Drake didn't like the integrity of the idea and dismissed it. There were already a number of sailboard designs available, and Drake also was concerned about the integrity of a design needing taut wire close to a human body to keep the sail upright.
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin spent two months in German lands in 1766, but his connections to the country stretched across a lifetime. He declared a debt of gratitude to German scientist Otto von Guericke for his early studies of electricity. Franklin also co-authored the first treaty of friendship between Prussia and America in 1785.
Franklin half dollar
Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross had long been an admirer of Benjamin Franklin, and wished to see him on a coin. In 1933, Sinnock had designed a medal featuring Franklin, which may have given her the idea. Franklin had opposed putting portraits on coins; he advocated proverbs about which the holder could profit through reflection. In a 1948 interview, Ross noted that Franklin only knew of living royalty on coins, and presumably would feel differently about a republic honoring a deceased founder. Indeed, Franklin might have been more upset at the reverse design: as numismatic writer Jonathan Tepper noted, "Had Benjamin Franklin known that he would be appearing on a half dollar with an eagle, he most likely would have been quite upset. He detested the eagle, and numismatic lore has it that he often referred to it as a scavenger. Given the practical man that he was, Franklin proposed the wild turkey as our national bird."
An 1890 statute forbade the replacement of a coin design without congressional action, unless it had been in service for 25 years, counting the year of first issuance. The Walking Liberty half dollar and Mercury dime had been first issued in 1916; they could be replaced without congressional action from and after 1940. Mint officials considered putting Franklin on the dime in 1941, but the project was shelved due to heavy demands on the Mint for coins as the United States entered World War II. During the war, the Mint contemplated adding one or more new denominations of coinage; Sinnock prepared a Franklin design in anticipation of a new issue, which did not occur. The dime was redesigned in 1946 to depict fallen President Franklin Roosevelt, who had been closely associated with the March of Dimes. The Walking Liberty design seemed old-fashioned to Mint officials, and the only other coin being struck which was eligible for replacement was the Lincoln cent. Abraham Lincoln remained a beloved figure, and Ross did not want to be responsible for removing him from the coinage.
Franklin Institute
The most recognizable part of the Franklin Institute's Science Center is the Franklin Institute Science Museum. In the spirit of inquiry and discovery embodied by Benjamin Franklin, the mission of the Franklin Institute Science Museum serves to inspire an understanding of and passion for science and technology learning. Among other exhibits, the Science Museum holds the largest collection of artifacts from the Wright brothers' workshop.The Science Center includes many pertinent attractions that are not museum exhibits. The Budd BB-1 "Pioneer" flying boat, in front of the museum, was the first stainless steel airplane built by the Edward F. Budd Manufacturing Corporation and has been on display since 1935.
Bikini Atoll
The nuclear weapons testing at Bikini Atoll program was a series of 23 nuclear devices detonated by the United States between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites. The test weapons were detonated on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air and underwater with a combined fission yield of 42.2 Mt. The testing began with the Operation Crossroads series in July 1946. Shortly after World War II ended, President Harry S. Truman directed Army and Navy officials to secure a site for testing nuclear weapons on American warships. While the Army had seen the results of a land-based explosion, the Navy wanted to know the effect of a nuclear weapon on ships. They wanted to determine whether ships could be spaced at sea and in ports in a way that would make nuclear weapons ineffective against vessels.
Kenneth Franklin
Kenneth Linn Franklin (March 25, 1923 – June 18, 2007) was an American astronomer and educator. Franklin was the chief scientist at the Hayden Planetarium from 1956 to 1984 and was co-credited with discovering radio waves originating on Jupiter, the first detection of signals from another planet. He was often a local and national media figure including during Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon, when Franklin was an on-camera astronomy expert for NBC.
Bird strike
The first reported bird strike was by Orville Wright in 1905. According to the Wright Brothers' diaries, "Orville [...] flew 4,751 meters in 4 minutes 45 seconds, four complete circles. Twice passed over fence into Beard's cornfield. Chased flock of birds for two rounds and killed one which fell on top of the upper surface and after a time fell off when swinging a sharp curve."
Drinking bird
By the 1760s (or earlier) German artisans had invented a so-called "pulse hammer" ("Pulshammer"). In 1767 Benjamin Franklin visited Germany, saw a pulse hammer, and in 1768, improved it. Franklin's pulse hammer consisted of two glass bulbs connected by a U-shaped tube; one of the bulbs was partially filled with water in equilibrium with its vapor. Holding the partially filled bulb in one's hand would cause the water to flow into the empty bulb. In 1872, the Italian physicist and engineer Enrico Bernardi combined three Franklin tubes to build a simple heat motor that was powered by evaporation in a way similar to the drinking bird.
Aerial Experiment Association
In 1898, Bell experimented with tetrahedral kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in maroon silk. The tetrahedral wings were named "Cygnet" I, II and III, and were flown both unmanned and manned ("Cygnet I" crashed during a flight carrying Selfridge) in the period from 1907–1912. Some of Bell's kites are on display at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.
Yankee Doodle Bugs
In the second segment, Bugs is interacting with Benjamin Franklin on the day that Franklin discovered electricity. "What's up, Benny?" Bugs asks. Ben states: "I'm trying to discover electricity," and asks Bugs if he can tend to his kite (with a key tied on it, naturally), and that he must get out "... ye first edition of "The Saturday Evening Post"", so he hands his kite string to Bugs to look after until he gets back. Bugs sees a storm cloud approach, lightning hits the kite and travels down the string and electrocutes him. Ben runs back, picks up Bugs who is flashing off and on like a lightbulb, exclaiming "I discovered electricity! I discovered electricity!" Bugs looks at the camera and says: "Heh ... "He" discovered electricity!"
Frederick Walker Baldwin
Baldwin used his engineering skills to help build the "Silver Dart" plus several other experimental aircraft. On March 12, 1908 at Lake Keuka, New York he became the first Canadian, and either the third or fourth North American, to pilot an airplane. William Whitney Christmas claimed to have first flown his aircraft on various dates from September 1907 to March 1908 near Fairfax, Virginia. The first two successful pilots were, of course, the famous Wright brothers, but it seems unlikely that it will ever be firmly established whether Christmas or Baldwin was the so-called "Third Man."
Electric spark
Around 600 BC, Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus observed that amber could be electrified when rubbed with a cloth and attract other objects and produce sparks. In 1671, Leibniz discovered that sparks were associated with electrical phenomena. In 1708, Samuel Wall performed experiments with amber rubbed with cloth to produce sparks. In 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard, acting on an experiment proposed by Benjamin Franklin, arranged for a retired French dragoon named Coiffier in the village of Marly to collect lightning in a Leyden jar thus proving that lightning and electricity were equivalent. In Franklin's famous kite experiment, he successfully extracted sparks from a cloud during a thunderstorm.
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department and the University of Pennsylvania.
502nd Infantry Regiment (United States)
The conceptual history of the American airborne started with thinkers ranging from Benjamin Franklin through World War I Army Air Corps General Billy Mitchell. Mitchell had wanted to load up the entire infantry strength of the 1st Division, the "Big Red One", into the back seats of biplanes, fly over the lines of trenches, then land and unload them to attack the German rear. The Soviet Union had used combat parachute assaults in Finland in the Winter War, and Germany had seized bridges and obstacles for its westbound armored units in 1940. But the real beginning was the German invasion of Crete in May 1941. This isolated rocky island in the Mediterranean was British held and heavily fortified, so rather than attempt a beach landing, the Germans dropped several parachute regiments on top of it. The terrain heavily favored the defenders, and the German Fallschirmjäger ("hunters from the sky") units took losses so heavy that Adolf Hitler never approved another large scale parachute operation again. That didn't matter to Allied war planners. What mattered was that a key piece of terrain had been taken entirely by airborne assets. This was a revolutionary development that America couldn't match yet. Within thirty days, the original 48-man Parachute Test Platoon was formed at Fort Benning, Georgia. Four parachute infantry battalions were planned to follow.
Leyden jar
In 1747–1748, Benjamin Franklin experimented with charging Leyden jars in series.
Lightning rod
Franklin speculated about lightning rods for several years before his reported kite experiment. This experiment, it is said, took place because he was tired of waiting for Christ Church in Philadelphia to be completed so he could place a lightning rod on top of it.
Malay kite
This diamond-bowed design gave inspiration to other designs, such as the aforementioned and now popular "Eddy" kite, designed by William Abner Eddy of Bayonne, New Jersey. The "Eddy" model, created four years after the Western appearance of the Malay in 1894, and patented approximately twenty months after that — application for "Kite" filed on 1 August 1898, by "William A. Eddy of Bayonne, New Jersey", U.S. patent number 646375 (issued on 27 March 1900) — has grown to become one of the most common and popular designs of kite in the 21st century.
Kite
The single-kite altitude record is held by a triangular-box delta kite. On 23 September 2014 a team led by Robert Moore, flew a kite to above ground level. The record altitude was reached after 8 series of attempts over a ten-year period from a remote location in western NSW, Australia. The tall and wide Dunton-Taylor delta kite's flight was controlled by a winch system using of ultra high strength Dyneema line. The flight took about eight hours from ground and return. The height was measured with on-board GPS telemetry transmitting positional data in real time to a ground-based computer and also back-up GPS data loggers for later analysis.There are safety issues involved in kite-flying. Kite lines can strike and tangle on electrical power lines, causing power blackouts and running the risk of electrocuting the kite flier. Wet kite lines or wire can act as a conductor for static electricity and lightning when the weather is stormy. Kites with large surface area or powerful lift can lift kite fliers off the ground or drag them into other objects. In urban areas there is usually a ceiling on how high a kite can be flown, to prevent the kite and line infringing on the airspace of helicopters and light aircraft. It is also possible for fighter kites to kill people, as happened in India when three spectators were killed in separate incidents during Independence Day, August, 2016—precipitating a ban on certain types of enhanced line.
Fixed-wing aircraft
Kites were used approximately 2,800 years ago in China, where materials ideal for kite building were readily available. Some authors hold that leaf kites were being flown much earlier in what is now Sulawesi, based on their interpretation of cave paintings on Muna Island off Sulawesi. By at least 549 AD paper kites were being flown, as it was recorded in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources list other uses of kites for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signaling, and communication for military operations.
Stories of kites were brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13th century, and kites were brought back by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although they were initially regarded as mere curiosities, by the 18th and 19th centuries kites were being used as vehicles for scientific research.
Kite aerial photography
Manned kite flying and aerial photography was advanced also by French Marcel Maillot, British Robert Baden-Powell, Americans Charles Lamson and William Abner Eddy, Australian Lawrence Hargrave (inventor of box kite in 1893 and kite train in 1884) and French Captain Saconney.
Faraday cage
Although this cage effect has been attributed to Michael Faraday's famous ice pail experiments performed in 1843, it was Benjamin Franklin in 1755 who observed the effect by lowering an uncharged cork ball suspended on a silk thread through an opening in an electrically charged metal can. In his words, "the cork was not attracted to the inside of the can as it would have been to the outside, and though it touched the bottom, yet when drawn out it was not found to be electrified (charged) by that touch, as it would have been by touching the outside. The fact is singular." Franklin had discovered the behavior of what we now refer to as a Faraday cage or shield (based on Faraday's later experiments which duplicated Franklin's cork and can).
Franklin's lost expedition
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1878In June 1981, Owen Beattie, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, began the 1845–48 Franklin Expedition Forensic Anthropology Project (FEFAP) when he and his team of researchers and field assistants travelled from Edmonton to King William Island, traversing the island's western coast as Franklin's men did 132 years before. FEFAP hoped to find artifacts and skeletal remains in order to use modern forensics to establish identities and causes of death among the lost 129.
Science and technology in the United States
Two of America's founding fathers were scientists of some repute. Benjamin Franklin conducted a series of experiments that deepened human understanding of electricity. Among other things, he proved what had been suspected but never before shown: that lightning is a form of electricity. Franklin also invented such conveniences as bifocal eyeglasses. Franklin also conceived the mid-room furnace, the "Franklin Stove." However, Franklin's design was flawed, in that his furnace vented the smoke from its base: because the furnace lacked a chimney to "draw" fresh air up through the central chamber, the fire would soon go out. It took David R. Rittenhouse, another hero of early Philadelphia, to improve Franklin's design by adding an L-shaped exhaust pipe that drew air through the furnace and vented its smoke up and along the ceiling, then into an intramural chimney and out of the house.
Faye Flam
Flam's publications with "Knight Science Journalism Tracker" began in 2012 with an article about science broadcaster Bill Nye's recent comments on teaching creationism. She continues to write for Knight, reviewing and criticizing science journalism, focusing on media coverage of controversial topics and uncritical reporting on questionable research. She also wrote a blog called "Lightning Rod" for the NewsWorks web site of "WHYY" public radio. This blog was launched in 2012 with a review of the controversy among historians over whether Ben Franklin's famous experiment with a kite in a lightning storm ever really happened. She regularly writes articles on astronomy, conspiracy theories, biology, and pseudoscience.
Flam's articles have frequently been republished by other journals and sites, including "The Washington Post", "the News Herald", "The Japan Times", and the "Richard Dawkins Foundation".
Red kite
The English word "kite" is from the Old English "cyta" which is of unknown origin. A kite is mentioned by Geoffrey Chaucer's in his "Knight's Tale". The early fifteenth century Hengwrt manuscript contains the lines: "Ther cam a kyte, whil þt they were so wrothe That bar awey the boon bitwix hem bothe." The first recorded use of the word "kite" for a toy that is attached to a length of string and flown in the air dates from the seventeenth century.
Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll
The nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll program was a series of 23 nuclear devices detonated by the United States between 1946 and 1958 at seven test sites on the reef itself, on the sea, in the air and underwater. The test weapons produced a combined fission yield of 42.2 Mt of explosive power.
Alexander George McAdie
Among his accomplishments was the invention of a device to prevent frost from harming fruit. He was a pioneer in the use of kites to study conditions at high altitudes. In 1885 at Blue Hill, Boston, he modernized the experiments of Benjamin Franklin by attaching a voltmeter to a kite and measuring the voltage difference between the ground and several hundred feet up. He also made studies of the atmospheric effects of smoke, the connection between the aurora and electricity in the atmosphere, and the dangers posed by lightning. He is the author of a cloud atlas.
Black kite
The black kite was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his "Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux" in 1770. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the "Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle". This was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name "Falco migrans" in his catalogue of the "Planche Enluminées". The type locality is France. The current genus "Milvus" was erected by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1799. "Milvus" is the Latin word for a red kite; the specific "migrans" means "migrating" from the Latin "migrare" "to migrate".
Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge
Ellet's brainstorming sessions with his men raised several ideas that could enable a line to be suspended across the gorge; these included firing cannonballs with the line attached, towing it across the river with a steamer, and tying it to a rocket that would then be launched across the gorge. Ultimately the bridge engineer chose an idea inspired by Benjamin Franklin's experiment with a kite. It was similar to 15th century inventor Leonardo da Vinci's plan to span a gap. Ellet also took the opportunity to generate publicity for his project. Organizing a kite-flying contest, he offered $5 to any boy who flew a kite across the gorge and secured the kite string to the other side. Youths from nearby towns flocked in to participate. Unlike the other boys who flew their kites from the United States side of the gorge, 16-year-old Homan Walsh crossed the river by a ferry upstream and walked to the Canadian side of the bridge site to launch his kite. He almost succeeded on his first attempt; his kite flew across but crashed just short of the shore. After resting several days at a friend's house, Walsh finally got his kite across the gorge and secured its line to a tree.
Charles Ellet and his team tied a heavier line to the kite string and pulled the joined lines across. They pulled successive heavier and stronger lines across until the final bridge cable— thick—was hanging across the gorge. The cable was suspended between two wooden towers tall, and it was attached to an iron basket. Ellet planned to use this system as a basket ferry to shuttle workers and materials across the gorge, saving time that would otherwise have been spent on land and ferry travel. Through media coverage and word-of-mouth, many people knew of Ellet's efforts and flocked to the site to watch the construction. On March 13, 1848, the system was completed, and the team planned to test it by pulling the empty basket across. They hit a snag when the basket kept getting stuck halfway and could not move ahead. Pulling back the basket, Ellet decided to assure the watching crowd that the system was workable. He stepped into the basket, and it moved towards the opposite shore. When Ellet reached the problematic spot, he spotted the issue; the basket's rollers could not pass over a portion of the cable that had been accidentally flattened during the construction. He fixed the problem and proceeded to cross to the Canadian side and back, becoming the first person to cross the gorge. Although the bridge companies had prohibited Ellet from collecting tolls, he charged each person $1.00 for the chance to "observe first hand the engineering wonder of bridging the Niagara". On some days, the basket ferry conveyed up to 125 people across the gorge.
List of nuclear weapons tests
The Vela Incident was an unidentified "double flash" of light detected by a partly functional, decommissioned American Vela Satellite on September 22, 1979 in the Indian Ocean (near the Prince Edward Islands off Antarctica), other sensors which could have recorded proof of a nuclear test were not functioning on this satellite. It is possible that this was produced by a nuclear device. If this flash detection was actually a nuclear test, a popular theory favored in the diary of then sitting American President Jimmy Carter, is that it resulted from a covert joint South African and Israeli nuclear test of an advanced highly miniaturized Israeli artillery shell sized device which was unintentionally detectable by satellite optical sensor due to a break in the cloud cover of a typhoon. Analysis of the South African nuclear program later showed only six of the most crude and heavy designs weighing well over 340 kg had been built when they finally declared and disarmed their nuclear arsenal. The 1986 Vanunu leaks analyzed by nuclear weapon miniaturization pioneer Ted Taylor revealed very sophisticated miniaturized Israeli designs among the evidence presented. Also suspected were France testing a neutron bomb near their Kerguelen Islands territory, the Soviet Union making a prohibited atmospheric test, as well as India or Pakistan doing initial proof of concept tests of early weaponized nuclear bombs.
Wright brothers
In July 1899 Wilbur put wing warping to the test by building and flying a biplane kite with a five-foot (1.5m) wingspan. When the wings were warped, or twisted, one end of the wings produced more lift and the other end less lift. The unequal lift made the wings tilt, or bank: the end with more lift rose, while the other end dropped, causing a turn in the direction of the lower end. The warping was controlled by four cords attached to the kite, which led to two sticks held by the kite flyer, who tilted them in opposite directions to twist the wings.
Wright Glider
The 1899 kite, which Wilbur flew near his home in Dayton, Ohio had a wingspan of only 5 feet (1.5 m). This pine wood and shellacked craft, although too small to carry a pilot, tested the concept of wing-warping for roll control that would prove essential to the brothers' solving the problem of controlled flight. The Wrights burned the craft along with other trash in 1905.
George Pocock (inventor)
Pocock was interested in kites from an early age, and experimented with pulling loads using kite power, gradually progressing from small stones to planks and large loads. He taught at a school in Prospect Place, Bristol and continued his experiments with his pupils. By 1820 he had determined that in combination they could support considerable weight and began experimenting with man-lifting kites. In 1824, he used a 30-foot (9 m) kite with a chair rig to lift his daughter, Martha (the future mother of cricketer W.G. Grace) over 270 feet (82 m) into the air. Later the same year and continuing to use his family as subjects, he lifted his son to the top of a cliff outside Bristol; his son briefly dismounted from the chair at the top of the 200-foot (60 m) cliff and then concluded the test by releasing a clip on the kite line which allowed him to slide down the line in the chair and return to earth.
Glider (aircraft)
The Wright Brothers developed a series of three manned gliders after preliminary tests with a kite as they worked towards achieving powered flight. They returned to glider testing in 1911 by removing the motor from one of their later designs.
Man-lifting kite
Alexander Graham Bell developed a tetrahedral kite, constructed of sticks arranged in a honeycomb of triangular sections, called cells. From a one cell model at the beginning of the 1890s, Bell advanced to a 3,393 cell "Cygnet" model in the early 1900s. This 40 foot (12.2 m) long, 200 lb (91 kg) kite was towed by a steamer in Baddeck Bay, Nova Scotia on December 6, 1907 and carried a man 168 feet (51.2 m) above the sea. Roald Amundsen, the polar explorer, commissioned tests on a man-lifting kite to see whether it would be suitable for use for observation in the Arctic, but the trials were unsatisfactory, and the idea was never developed.
William Franklin
William joined a company of Pennsylvania provincial troops in 1746 and fought in Albany in King George's War, obtaining the rank of captain in 1747. As he grew older, he accompanied his father on several missions, including trips to England. Although often depicted as a young child when he assisted his father in the famed kite experiment of 1752, William was at least 21 years old at the time.
Benjamin Franklin
During his stay in France, Benjamin Franklin was active as a Freemason, serving as Venerable Master of the Lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781. He was the 106th member of the Lodge. In 1784, when Franz Mesmer began to publicize his theory of "animal magnetism" which was considered offensive by many, Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Benjamin Franklin. In 1781, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Catheter
The earliest invention of the flexible catheter was during the 18th century. Extending his inventiveness to his family's medical problems, Benjamin Franklin invented the flexible catheter in 1752 when his brother John suffered from bladder stones. Franklin's catheter was made of metal with segments hinged together with a wire enclosed to provide rigidity during insertion.
Samuel Franklin Cody
Finally, in 1907, he created an unmanned "power-kite". Somewhat similar to his standard kite but with bigger wings and a tailplane with twin fins in place of the rear cell, this was fitted with a 15 hp Buchet engine. It was not allowed to fly free; Cody strung a long aerial wire down the length of the Farnborough Balloon Shed and flew it indoors.
Jacques de Romas
The same decade, Romas conducted the kite experiment that Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1750 in a letter to Peter Collinson, but that had not yet reached France. Raising a wire-wrapped kite in a thunderstorm, Romas proved the electrical nature of lightning. During his experiment, he noticed ten feet long sparks and explosions. He also reported that during a repeat performance in front of a larger audience, he received severe jolts that were more intense than all he received before during experiments with Leyden jars. For this reason, he performed later experiments only with separately grounded conductors and kites that he handled via glass rods.
Peter Lynn
In 1995 he designed the ram-air inflated Megabite, a 635 square metre kite. It was accepted as the world’s largest kite by Guinness in 1997. When on the ground, more than 1000 people can comfortably stroll around inside it. He also designed the current Guinness record holder, a 1019 square metre Kuwait flag, which took over the world record from the Megabite in 2005. That same year, he built two additional identically sized kites (Mega Flag in the United States and Mega Moon in Japan), allowing for more exhibitions of the World's Largest Kites around the world.
History by Contract
The agreement ended a bitter feud that existed between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian over credit for developing the first man-carrying airplane to achieve controlled, sustained powered flight. After short test flights of the heavily modified Langley Aerodrome by Glenn Curtiss in 1914, the Smithsonian claimed that the Aerodrome, created by former Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Langley and unsuccessfully tested shortly before the 1903 Kitty Hawk flights, was "the first man-carrying airplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight," according to the plaque displayed with the Aerodrome. Orville believed that claim "perverted" the history of flying machines and refused to donate the 1903 Kitty Hawk Flyer to the Smithsonian, loaning it instead to the Science Museum, London in 1928. When the Smithsonian recanted its claim in 1942, Orville agreed to have the Flyer returned to the United States. The airplane remained in protective storage in Britain during World War II and was not returned to the U.S. until 1948, when the agreement was signed by Orville Wright's executors following his death.
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more clearly Franklin conducted experiments. In 1758 on a warm day in Cambridge, England, Franklin and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching . Another thermometer showed that the room temperature was constant at . In his letter "Cooling by Evaporation", Franklin noted that, "One may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day."
Nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll
The United States was engaged in a Cold War Nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union to build more advanced bombs from 1947 until 1991. The first series of tests over Bikini Atoll in July 1946 was code named Operation Crossroads. The first test was dropped from an aircraft and detonated above the target fleet. The second, "Baker", was suspending under a barge. It produced a large Wilson cloud and contaminated all of the target ships. Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, the longest-serving chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, called the second test "the world's first nuclear disaster."
Great Kite
The Great Kite was a wooden machine designed by Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo realized it between the end of 1400 and the beginning of 1500. Drawings of parts and components of this machine can be found in the Codex on the flight of birds, which however lacks the overall description of the machine itself. Some drawings within the same codex suggest that it was designed in similarity with flapping flight. However, this was hardly possible to perform given the available technologies, thus Leonardo developed a machine for mainly a gliding flight. The machine is named after the animal from which Leonardo took inspiration to realize the flying machine, the Kite.
Kytoon
In 1919, a handbook was published giving extensive details to support the kite balloon crafts being used in the military. Described is the first kite balloon made in 1893 by Captains Parseval and Sigsfeld at the Berlin works of the Prussian Balloon Battalion; theirs was the "predecessor of the "Drachen" balloon." "This was the first real kite balloon flying like a kite with a fairly constant angle and direction relative to the wind and remained practically unchanged until the beginning of the war in 1914-1918."
A hybrid kite-balloon was patented by Domina Jalbert in 1944 as patent US2431938 and later became known as the kytoon. Jalbert furthered his attention on kite balloons also with another patent filed on August 31, 1945 titled "Kite Balloon"
History of electromagnetic theory
Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous, experiment of having his son fly a kite through a storm-threatened sky. A key attached to the kite string sparked and charged a Leyden jar, thus establishing the link between lightning and electricity. Following these experiments, he invented a lightning rod. It is either Franklin (more frequently) or Ebenezer Kinnersley of Philadelphia (less frequently) who is considered to have established the convention of positive and negative electricity.
Timeline of United States inventions (1890–1945)
A fixed-wing aircraft, or airplane, is a heavier-than-air craft whose lift is generated by air pressure differential between the upper and lower wing surfaces. The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio, made the first powered and sustained airplane flights under control of the pilot in the Wright Flyer I on December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In the two years afterward, they developed their flying machine into the world's first practical fixed-wing aircraft. By October 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable and proven to circle in the air 30 times in 39 minutes for a total distance of 24.5 miles. The brothers' fundamental breakthrough was their invention of "three-axis control", which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium. This required method has become standard on all fixed-wing aircraft. From the beginning of their aeronautical work, the Wright brothers focused on unlocking the secrets of control to conquer "the flying problem", rather than on developing more powerful engines as some other experimenters did. Charles Edward Taylor built the first aircraft engine and was a vital contributor of mechanical aspects in the building and maintaining of early Wright engines and airplanes. Although there were many earlier attempts at heavier-than-air powered flight, some of which achieved successful short hops, and disputed earlier claims of sustained flight, the Wright brothers are officially credited by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the international record-setting body for aeronautics and astronautics, as achieving "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight". In addition, U.S. patent number #821393 for the airplane, was filed by Orville Wright on March 23, 1903 and was issued in May 1906.
Walking Liberty half dollar
In 1947, Mint Director Nellie Tayloe Ross asked Engraver Sinnock to produce a design for a half dollar featuring Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. Ross had long been an admirer of Franklin, and wanted to see him on a coin. Mint officials had considered putting Franklin on the dime in 1941, but the project was shelved owing to heavy demands on the Mint for coins as the United States entered World War II. During the war, the Mint contemplated adding one or more new denominations of coinage; Sinnock prepared a Franklin design in anticipation of a new issue, which did not occur. In 1946, the Treasury replaced the Mercury dime with a piece depicting the recently deceased president, Franklin Roosevelt, who had been closely associated with the March of Dimes. With the Lincoln cent popular and politically inexpedient to replace, the half dollar was the only piece being struck which was available for redesign without congressional permission. The Treasury approved the new design. Although Sinnock died before the coin was issued, the Franklin half dollar went into production at the start of 1948, ending the Walking Liberty series. A total of 485,320,340 Walking Liberty half dollars were struck.
Jimmy Franklin
In the 1990s, he and Les Shockley, the inventor of the Shockwave Jet Truck, modified his Waco, attaching a General Electric J85 jet engine to the underside. It was in this aircraft that Franklin's son Kyle became the first person to wing-walk on a jet powered aircraft.
Wright Flyer
The Smithsonian Institution, and primarily its then-secretary Charles Walcott, refused to give credit to the Wright Brothers for the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft. Instead, they honored the former Smithsonian Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley, whose 1903 tests of his own Aerodrome on the Potomac were not successful. Walcott was a friend of Langley and wanted to see Langley's place in aviation history restored. In 1914, Glenn Curtiss had recently exhausted the appeal process in a patent infringement legal battle with the Wrights. Curtiss sought to prove Langley's machine, which failed piloted tests nine days before the Wrights successful flight in 1903, capable of controlled, piloted flight in an attempt to invalidate the Wright's wide sweeping patents.
Thomas Selfridge
Selfridge took his first flight on December 6, 1907, on Bell's tetrahedral kite, the "Cygnet", made of 3,393 winged cells. It took him 168 feet in the air above Bras d'Or Lake in Nova Scotia, Canada, and flew for seven minutes. This was the first recorded passenger flight of any heavier-than-air craft in Canada. He also flew a craft built by a Canadian engineer, Frederick W. Baldwin, which flew three feet off the ground for a distance of about 100 feet.
Lightning rod
In what later became the United States, the pointed lightning rod conductor, also called a lightning attractor or Franklin rod, was invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1749 as part of his groundbreaking exploration of electricity. Although not the first to suggest a correlation between electricity and lightning, Franklin was the first to propose a workable system for testing his hypothesis. Franklin speculated that, with an iron rod sharpened to a point,
Frankenstein's monster
Another proposal is that the character of Dr. Frankenstein was based upon a real scientist who had a similar name, and who had been called a modern Prometheus – Benjamin Franklin. Accordingly, the monster would represent the new nation that Franklin helped to create out of remnants left by England. Victor Frankenstein's father "made also a kite, with a wire and string, which drew down that fluid from the clouds," wrote Shelley, similar to Franklin's famous kite experiment.
Kite aerial photography
The famous kite image of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake (right) was taken by an early pioneer in KAP, George Lawrence using a large panoramic camera and stabilizing rig he designed.
Naval aviation
Early experiments on the use of kites for naval reconnaissance took place in 1903 at Woolwich Common for the Admiralty. Samuel Franklin Cody demonstrated the capabilities of his 8 foot long black kite and it was proposed for use as either a mechanism to hold up wires for wireless communications or as a manned reconnaissance device that would give the viewer the advantage of considerable height.
Ultralight trike
The history of the trike is traced back to the invention of Francis Rogallo's flexible wing and subsequent development by the Paresev engineering team's innovations and then others. On 1948, engineer Francis Rogallo invented a self-inflating wing which he patented on March 20, 1951, as the Flexible wing. It was on October 4, 1957, when the Russian satellite Sputnik shocked the United States and the space race caught the imagination of its government, causing major increases in U.S. government spending on scientific research, education and on the immediate creation of NASA. Rogallo was in position to seize the opportunity and released his patent to the government and with his help at the wind tunnels, NASA began a series of experiments testing Rogallo's wing – which was renamed Para Wing – in order to evaluate it as a recovery system for the Gemini space capsules and recovery of used Saturn rocket stages. F. Rogallo's team adapted and extended the totally flexible principle into semi-rigid variants. This mainly involved stabilizing the leading edges with compressed air beams or rigid structures like aluminum tubes. By 1960, NASA had already made test flights of a powered heavily framed cargo aircraft called the Ryan XV-8 or "Fleep" (short for 'Flying Jeep') and by March 1962, of a weight-shift experimental glider called Paresev. By 1967, all Para Wing projects were dropped by NASA in favor of using round parachutes without officially considering development of personal ultralight gliders, but the airfoil's simplicity of design and ease of construction, along with its capability of slow flight and its gentle landing characteristics, did not go unnoticed by hang glider enthusiasts. The challenge then, was to modify and fit a Rogallo flexible wing with an appropriate frame to allow it to be used as a hang glider.
Kenneth Franklin
Franklin was born in Alameda, California to Myles Arthur and Ruth Linn (Houston) Franklin. He received an A.A. degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1944 and bachelor's degree in 1948. He married Beverly Mattson on November 29, 1949. He earned a Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1953 and a research fellowship at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1954 to 1956. In 1955, Franklin and Dr. Bernard F. Burke were scanning for space signals when they heard a hissing noise. Originally thinking the noise was a passing vehicle's spark plug, they soon traced it to Jupiter, the first noise ever traced to a specific planet. They presented their findings to the American Astronomical Society on April 6, 1955. In March 1956, Franklin's wife, with whom he had two daughters, died. Franklin began working at the Hayden Planetarium the same year. On May 18, 1958, he married Charlotte Walton, who worked at Carnagie in the terrestrial magnetism dept., and later legally adopted a daughter from her previous marriage.
He also specialized in solar eclipses.
Box kite
Most of the altitude records for kite flying are held by large box kites, with Dacron sails, flown with Spectra cable. However in 2014 Robert Moore and a team of kite experts flew a 12 sq metre DT delta to 16,009 ft above their launch point. The location of the flights was near Cobar in Western NSW, Australia. While this was primarily a triangular winged delta kite, it has a triangular box centre cell for additional stability. . Future attempts on either the single kite record or multiple kite record (trained), may use Hargrave box kites or a variant. Before Dacron, Spectra, and Kevlar were available, high performance box kites used oiled silk, linen or hemp sails, and were flown with steel cable. Silk, linen and hemp were used because they could be spun finer than cotton and stretched relatively little when wet. Steel had the highest available strength for its weight. After Hargrave invented the box kite, weather stations from around the world saw the potential for his design. Blue hill observatory and the German weather station at Lindenberg used kites routinely until weather balloons took over in the 1920's and 1930's.
Experiments and Observations on Electricity
There were eleven editions of Experiments and Observations on Electricity. There were five English editions, three French editions, and an edition each in German, Italian and Latin. The first three English editions were similar, but not identical, and consisted of two or three parts. Each of these separate parts were printed and sold individually as a pamphlet. Each had a slight title change (i.e. "New", "Supplemental") apparently to promote selling additional copies to people that had bought before.The French translation, published in 1752, contained an experiment suggesting that a long, pointed iron rod would attract a lightning bolt from a thunderstorm cloud. In 1750 Hopkinson suggested to Franklin the concept that electricity is attracted to points. Franklin then carried the idea a step forward and surmised that a pointed iron rod high above a rooftop would attract a lightning bolt, if the bolt was of electricity. Frenchman Thomas-Francois d'Alibald did the actual experiment May 10, 1752, as Franklin had suggested and lightning struck the iron rod. In London it was repeated in Spital Square on July 20, 1752, and again in Chelmsford, Essex, on August 12, 1752. The electricity attraction from a lightning storm was also done by Franklin himself in the kite experiment that he talked about in a letter to Collinson dated October 19, 1752. A man by the name of G. W. Richman was killed in 1753 from electrocution doing the kite experiment. Franklin had proven that lightning bolts and electricity were one and the same. He also showed that this "electric fluid" was attracted to a sharply pointed object high in the sky. An iron rod could have the other end put into the ground to create a path for safe conduction of the high voltage electricity. Thus, a way of diverting lightning bolts from wooden buildings and preventing them from going aflame due to lightning hits had been discovered. Franklin's lightning conductor invention, with its lightning rod uppermost point, became a model for the lightning-protection system used in America in the eighteenth century.
Early flying machines
The invention of the box kite during this period by the Australian Lawrence Hargrave led to the development of the practical biplane. In 1894, Hargrave linked four of his kites together, added a sling seat, and flew . By demonstrating to a sceptical public that it was possible to build a safe and stable flying machine, Hargrave opened the door to other inventors and pioneers. Hargrave devoted most of his life to constructing a machine that would fly. He believed passionately in open communication within the scientific community and would not patent his inventions. Instead, he scrupulously published the results of his experiments in order that a mutual interchange of ideas may take place with other inventors working in the same field, so as to expedite joint progress. Octave Chanute became convinced that multiple wing planes were more effective than a monoplane and introduced the "strut-wire" braced wing structure which, with its combination of rigidity and lightness, would in the form of the biplane come to dominate aircraft design for decades to come. The inventor of the box kite Lawrence Hargrave also experimented in the 1880s with monoplane models and by 1889 had constructed a rotary engine driven by compressed air.
Technological and industrial history of the United States
Benjamin Franklin pioneered the study of electricity by being the first to describe positive and negative charges, as well as advancing the principle of conservation of charge. Franklin is best known for the apocryphal feat of flying a kite in thunderstorm to prove that lightning is a form of electricity which, in turn, led to the invention of the lightning rod to protect buildings.
Marcus Jernegan
He was part of a pioneering effort to map colonial churches. He wrote about slavery and conversion to Christianity in the United States. He also wrote about the veracity of Benjamin Franklin's supposed experiments with a kite to demonstrate electricity.
Kite
The exact origins of the practice of kite flying (exclusively) at Easter are unclear. Brereton and Yelvington speculate that kite flying was introduced by Chinese indentured immigrants to the then colony of British Guiana in the mid 19th century. The author of an article in the "Guyana Chronicle" newspaper of May 6, 2007 is more certain: