I watched a couple of children at gusty Naskeag Point yesterday enjoying an ancient art and learning something about the mysteries of flight. Perhaps kite-flying was the original online entertainment.
It made me wonder about who invented the kite, which led to a little (of course) online research. As I now understand, no one really knows for sure who invented the kite. Most scholars think that it was invented in China, but there is evidence of very early use of kites to fish in inaccessible places in the South Pacific and Indonesia.
There does seem to be agreement as to the first written account about kite-flying, which was in 200 BC and was inauspicious. It described a Chinese general flying a kite over a city that he was attacking; he was using the kite’s line to measure how far his army would have to tunnel under enemy defenses. Kites were used in many more benign research projects since, including our own Ben Franklin’s electrifying efforts. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 10, 2023.)