History
Ever since man has born on the earth he had the keen desire to fly. This longing inspired him to draft his imagination into the invention of kites. Their exhilarating and glorious history is depicted in the Kite Museum of Ahmedabad.
200 BC: Huein Tsang flew a kite at night to scare the army of Liu Pang of Han dynasty in china.
100 BC to 500 AD: Army generals used kites to send signals and also to measure the distance of enemy camps.
930 AD: The word "Shiroshi" was first mentioned in Japanese literature for kite where 'Shi' means paper and 'Roshi' stands for the Chinese bird.
960 to 1126 AD: Flying kites was popular means of recreation in China. People celebrated the 9th day of the ninth month as the day of expulsion of evil, by flying kites.
1542 AD: The word ' Patang' finds its first mention in Indian literature. The word was used by Manzan in 'Madhumalti', where the flight of a kite is associated with the loved one by a poet.
1752 AD: Benjamin Franklin propelled a kite to prove that lightning was the result of same electric material that generated electricity. To demonstrate the production of lighting from the electricity an experiment was conduced in which wooden sticks were affixed to four corners of a square silk handkerchief and a projecting metal wire with sharp edge was attached to it. When an electrified cloud was passed over the kite, lightning was drawn down through the pointed wire.
1870 AD: Box-kites were designed by an Australian Lawrence Hargrave whose invention was an inspiration for others to create power driven aeroplanes.
1896 AD: Alexander Graham Bell designed ' tetra' by combining lightweight sticks. He flew 'Frost King" kite of 256 cells and improvised it to have 1300, and later 3393 cells. At the same time, Samuel Cody carried out experiments with man carrying diplane gliders.
1902 AD: The Wright brothers, were successful in becoming airborne, age of aviation begins.