By Dan Beard
Kites for Practical Uses.
The engineers who constructed the first bridge across the Niagara River did not refuse to accept as a means of communication between the shores a line placed there by a kite. 160 years ago an Englishman by the name of Ward suggested the use of a kite as a means of establishing communication between vessels wrecked upon the off-lying rocks of a lee shore and the mainland. Being an Englishman, he selected, of course, the inevitable bow kite (Fig. 26), with its tail festooned with bunches of paper in the manner made respectable by ages of use.
Fig. 26.
The Inevitable Box Kite.
Sticks are Represented by Thick
Lines. Strings are Represented by Thin Lines. Where the Paper is
Folded and Pasted the Edges are Represented by Doted Lines.
I give his method because it may be of use to boys in accomplishing some other object, such as stretching a homemade telephone line across the intervening space between two big apartment houses, or across a river or lake in the country, or for a thousand other purposes dear to a boy.
Mr. Ward's method of using a kite as a means of suspending and conveying a line ashore is as follows:
At a short distance below the kite's bellyband, attach to the kite string a loop and suspend from the loop a pulley light enough in weight not to impede the flight of the Weight and Pulley Kite. Over this pulley pass a second string and fasten the weight to the end, the other end of the string being aboard the ship. When the kite has sailed through the storm until it floats over the land, no more line is given out, and the kite becomes a stationary point, from which the weight attached to the end of the mine is allowed to drop, and thus form a communication between the ship and the shore. In an experiment made by the inventor, the kite was found to fly best with the weight hung at least ten yards below the kite. (See Fig. 27.)
