Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/61

Rh The pioneer in scientific kite-flying in America, in the recent period, is the Blue Hill Observatory, in the suburbs of Boston; and here, too, the highest flights have been made.

It is not asserted that there have not been other successful experiments with kites, but that the results of those at Blue Hill are in advance of all others in the field of meteorology. Mr. E. Douglass Archibald, in England, has made experiments with a kite and anemometer, and is the inventor of the improved tail, which has

cup cones instead of bobs; while Mr. Hargrave, an Englishman in Australia, there invented the valuable type of kite which bears his name. In America, Prof. C. E. Marvin, Mr. A. W. Potter, and others, of Washington; Mr. William A. Eddy, of New Jersey; and Mr. G. T. Woglom and others, of New York, have all done valuable service. Professor Marvin is the author of the two pamphlets of valuable technical investigations in relation to kites, issued by the United States Weather Bureau. Mr. Woglom, also, has published a valuable treatise on parakites, while Mr. Eddy has devised the excellent kite connected with his name.

The first attempts at Blue Hill were with the Malay kite—the prototype of the Eddy kite. Mr. Eddy claims, however, that his bird-form kite is the result of his own study and experiment, before he had exact knowledge of the form used by the Malays and Javanese.

The descriptive term, bird-form, has reference, not to the outlines of a bird of any kind, but of the proportions of width to length in a kite, as comparable to the length of body and spread of wings