"I found that by lying on my back and holding the stick in my hands," he wrote in his autobiography, "I was drawn along on the surface of the water in a very agreeable manner." He was flying a paper kite on a hot summer day when he came upon a pond. He eventually learned to ground his wires.įranklin had another experience with kites - much earlier in his life. Even Franklin admitted he killed many a turkey during his trials and that he had been knocked unconscious by a charge from one of his Leyden jars. However, Franklin could have easily been killed by this experiment - as were some others who tried to duplicate it. When Franklin touched the key with the back of his knuckle, he felt a shock - both physical and mental. Then he noticed that a few of the silk threads tied to a metal key were standing straight out. In June of 1752, Franklin and his 21-year-old son took a silk kite out into a storm.Īfter quite a while, Franklin considered calling off the experiment, as nothing seemed to be happening. He believed that the Earth and sky functioned like the conducting layers of a Leyden jar, an early form of electrical conductor. But the government tried unsuccessfully to discourage the practice as "too many people became unmindful of their work."īENJAMIN FRANKLIN: One of the most famous - and luckiest - of kite fliers, Franklin used kites to test his theories about the atmosphere. The general used a large kite to carry a fireball into the sky, and the soldiers, seeing the star return to heaven, rallied to defeat the rebels.ĭuring the Edo period in Japan, people below the Samurai class were allowed to fly kites for the first time. They had seen a large shooting star fall from the sky and considered it a bad omen. Gim Yu-sin was ordered to subdue a revolt. During the Silla Dynasty of Korea, around A.D. Kites eventually spread to other Asian countries. Knowing that distance, the troops reached inside the city walls, surprised their enemy and won the battle. Han Hsin also flew a kite over the walls of a city he was attacking to measure how far he would have to tunnel to get past the defenses. The whistling of the pipes incited fear among the enemy. The Chinese would attach bamboo pipes to their kites and fly them over the enemy. THE ASIAN CONNECTION: During the Han Dynasty (200 B.C.-A.D.
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