Alexander Graham Bell's ginormous kite, 1920

Xeni Jardin 11:17 am Tue Dec 26, 2006

BB reader Octal Khan says,

I scanned this photo from a 1920 National Geographic I bought for my dad for Christmas (he was born in 1920). Inside was an article about Alexander Graham Bell, widely regarded as the inventor of the telephone. Bell was also a supporter of aerospace engineering research and experimented with box kites and wings constructed of multiple compound tetrahedral kites covered in silk, including ones big enough to carry men aloft. This picture of a giant ring kite really caught my eye.

Link to scanned magazine article. A quick Google Patent search shows this related patent filed by Bell in 1906: Link.

Reader comment: Mark Eckenweiler says,

Note that Bell also designed & successfully tested the first wireless telephone – in 1880, a full 15 years before Marconi’s groundbreaking work in radio. (I wrote a short piece for WaPo last year on the 125th anniversary of the field test: Link )

Patents here: 1, 2.

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