KITE EXPERIMENTS AT THE WEATHER BUREAU

 

author Charles Frederick Marwin,

first published in the Monthly Weather Review in April, May, June and July 1896, then reprinted in 1901 as a booklet.

 

It is one of the first comprehensive and scientific work on kites. It is based on experiments. It doesn't explain why a kite is flying, but how it is flying and how to improve the flight with regards to its lifting force and to its stability. The fundamentals explained in this work have had a great beneficial influence on the followers and are still valid nowadays.

I found that the concept of efficiency is a great value to understand kites (it is described on page 69 of the booklet or page 238 of the July issue). The 21 plates are totaling 75 figures, some of which have been so many times reproduced. It is unfortunate that so many authors have used these figures to illustrate their papers and have totally ignored the fruitfulness of the contents.

 

I haven't see any download of the booklet, but each paper of the Monthly Weather Review is available through the A. M. S. web site. Herebelow are the links: