John Dobson’s Kite Site

George Webster’s Kite History


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Over the years, George Webster has written a number of articles on the history of kites and kiting. With George's help, I am in the process of collecting these articles together and slightly editing them and turning them into pdf files.

I am helping George with a major rewriting and restructuring the articles into a continuous narrative. This will be published here when it is ready, hopefully sometime in 2010. Meanwhile, please feel free to download any that are of interest to you. Note well that the titles below should be treated as drafts. In particular, text formatting is still a bit arbitrary and the diagrams and photos are currently not always present, though they will be in due course. All the links are to pdf files: click the title to open in a new window, right-click to download.

All articles are copyright © George Webster, so they may not be reprinted without permission.

The Invention of the Kite

An Outline History of Kites in the West

The Golden Age of Kites

More Box Kites

Bird Kites

Flat Kites

Delta Kites

Sled Kites

Soft Kites

Exceptional Kites

Some Points on Kite Flying

How Kites Fly

Faults and Actions

Why Kites Fly - a reply

Kites and the Wrights

Benjamin Franklin

The Use of Kites for Fishing

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