Kite-flying as a Science.

Evening Star, Issue 7752, 25 October 1888, Page 3

Kite-flying as a Science.

A correspondent who called upon Mr Douglas Archibald, F.R. Mot. Son., who has invented the combination of the kiteballoon, sends us the following account of the invention :—" Mr Archibald stated that experience had shown that captive balloons can only be flown with any success for purposes of observation during, on an average, a third of the year, on account; of their extreme sensitiveness to the action of the wind. Indeed, a captive balloon cannotbe utilised at all when the wind is blowing more than twenty miles an hour. By the invention of the kite-balloon, not only are these difficulties overcome, but a kite adds immensely to the lifting power of the balloon, and thus economises the cost of the gas employed. The kite is of silk stretched on two transverse rods of bamboo, and i 3 made in proportion to the size of the balloon. It is fastened to the side of the balloon, almost covering it, and thus protects it from the wind. With this application captive balloons can be flown during no less than about 330 days, as against 100 days without the kite. At a recent trial before Major Templar, at Chatham, the additional lifting power of the kite was fully demonstrated. Alone a small balloon of 100 cubic feet capacity could only raise 41b; but when attached to one of the small kites in a very light breeze it lifted 1,000 feet of steel wire (the earth-line) and one of the soldiers' coats, extemporised for the occasion, weighing 101b, a result which theballoondepartmentdeclaredhadneveryet been accomplished with bo small a balloon. Or to put the matter in another way, illustrating the value of the kite application as regards economy of space and cost: a balloon of 2,000 cubic feet capacity, with coal gas plus, a proportionate kite will lift ISOlb, say, in a wind of twenty miles an hour, while to lift the same weight by balloon alone a balloon of 4,500 cubic feet capacity would be required. Mr Archibald claims the utility of his invention for signalling at sea, where the wind is almost always too strong for a captive balloon to fly alone ; and in combination with Bruce's electric light balloons naval signalling might be effected with ships below the horizon. Mr Archibald has been for years carrying on experiments in anemometrical observation, under giants from the Royal Society, with a system of kite-flying. He raises kis kites tandem fashion in very light winds. A small one is first got aloft, which helps up a heavier one, and so on. With two small kites he once lifted about 2,500 ft of steel wire, and three anemometers, each weighing 1 Jib, to a vertical height of I,looft, with a wind of only a little over seven miles an hour. And he is now organising a system of kites which will in twenty minutes raise a man sufficiently high to take an observation of the enemy with the wind blowing from twenty to thirty-five miles an hour, when no balloon could possibly be utilised. And he has engaged to raise a camera with either a system of kites or with a kite-balloon at the approaching unionist demonstration in Eridge Park, by which means he hopes to procure a photograph both as interesting from a political as from a scientific point of view."