Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/73

Rh Probably the most striking thing in recent kite-flying is the making of photographic views by a camera in the sky, borne up by kites. Mr. William A. Eddy has claimed to be the pioneer in this field, having taken views from kites on May 30, 1895; while Messrs. G. T. Woglom and George E. Henshaw, of New York city, claim that the first good picture from a camera sustained by kites was made by them on the afternoon of September 21st, following.

There are several ways in which a camera could be carried up, and operated from terra firma. Mr. Eddy sends it up with its bearer attached to the strings of as many as three kites. The apparatus consists simply of two spars about the length of a trout rod, and of about its size at the butt, the end of one spar being joined firmly to the middle of the other; and on this junction the camera is mounted. A cord looped along the trunk line controls the slide of the camera. Many excellent pictures have been made by these means.

Kites have been used, also, for sending up colored lights for signaling; while by an ingenious use of a large and somewhat modified camera, views of objects at a distance have been presented to observers on the ground, when such objects would have been otherwise invisible to them. Thus the operation constitutes a sort of artificial mirage, which, very likely, will not always be without its uses.

It may reasonably be expected that kite-flying will, in the early future, become one of the most common pastimes, as it has already become a scientific pursuit at many places; being specially adapted to certain situations, as islands and upland regions.

On the Isles of Shoals, off the New Hampshire shore, during the last season there was a very elegant kite carnival. Nearly one hundred kites were there, mostly in the hands of children. The larger number were of the Clayton cellular pattern, but of small size. On one occasion sixteen of them were flown to a great height in a single tandem. Each kite was differently marked, by color or other means, so that these alone afforded a very pleasing spectacle, without regarding the delighted children and their maturer companions beneath.

Kites in tandem, unlike members of equine and other tandems, are rarely if ever in line, but diverge irregularly, like the branches of a tree. This is owing to variations in the flow of the atmosphere, which appears to be less uniform than the currents in a river, having eddyings, swervings, and evanescent accelerations and retardations.

Aside from the charming groups watching their progress, there is pleasure for any observer in a flight of these ethereal forms, various in color, dispread from the trunk line as though they were huge leaves or high-flying butterflies on the tips of invisible branches.