Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/69

Rh requirements except in the best weather; besides, so large a number are necessary in light winds to carry up the instruments to the desired elevation, involving labor and time, that the cellular kites are becoming the chief reliance for meteorological observations aloft.

The antetype of all these is the Hargrave pattern, invented by an Englishman of that name in Australia in 1894. All are remarkable for their lifting capacity, and generally for their ready ascent. The Hargrave consists of a light frame, outlining a box, about which, at each extremity, is a wide band of cloth, the frame being bare at the middle section. In proportions, a rectangular cell six feet long is usually about the same in width, and one fourth as deep as it is wide. There is much variation in most features of the box kite, as made by different fliers. The bridle is attached to the two lower corner bars nearly midway of the length or the four lower corners of the uncovered section, or otherwise, according to form and use.

For use at Blue Hill, observer Clayton devised a modification of the Hargrave, consisting chiefly in the narrowing of the box, and a different framing.

Another form of the cellular type is the diamond kite of Mr. S. A. Potter, of Washington, D. C, whose device has a square instead of an oblong aperture, and has the bridle on one of the longitudinal angles, so that it flies with a corner, instead of a side, downward. To this another Washington inventor has attached a pair of triangular wings, which is said to increase the lift very much, leither of the forms of Hargrave type bears even a suggestive resemblance to the common kite.

Still another cellular kite is that constructed by Mr. J. B. Millet, president of the Boston Aëronautical Society. Except by a diagram, an idea of this kite may be best conveyed by saying that, in the main, it is a Hargrave cell doubled, or having a third wall inclosing a superimposed cell; a development which might be carried on indefinitely. It is nearly the same form as the flying machine, carrying and operated by a small steam engine—the invention of Professor Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution.

I am not aware that the lifting capacity of any kite has been submitted to so striking a test as on the Hargrave until the present season. Two of these, on November 12, 1894, in Australia, are reported to have borne the inventor up sixteen feet; and in 1895, by the same number, he is said to have been lifted forty-five feet. Subsequently, Captain H. Baden-Powell, of the Scotch Grays, in England, was carried up one hundred feet by a tandem of the same type. On January 21, 1897, Lieutenant Hugh D. Wise, of the Ninth Infantry, United States Army, was lifted in a boatswain's swing