61 
Ordinary Meeting, December 28th, 1875. 
Edward Schunck, Pli.D., F.RS., &c., President, in the 
Chair. 
The following communication from Dr. Joule, F.RS., 
V.P., was read : — 
Unsuccessful attempts have recently been made for the 
purpose of utilizing a modification of the common kite as a 
means of obtaining a view of the surrounding country. 
The machine in each instance rose only to fall violently to 
the ground after remaining in the air a very short time. 
These trials have brought to my recollection some experi- 
ments I made more than six years ago, but of which I did 
not publish the results, imagining that all such matters 
must have been thoroughly elucidated by the Chinese, if 
not by our own more juvenile kite flyers. The usual 
method of making the skeleton of a kite is to afiix a rather 
slender bow to the top of a standard, tying the extremities 
of the bow to twine fastened to the bottom of the standard. 
The steadiness of the kite in the air depends on the fact 
that the wings yield with the wind. If the bow is too stiff 
and the surface nearly a plane, instability results. A kite 
ought to have a convex spherical surface for the wind to 
impinge upon. Such a surface I readily made by fixing 
two bows crosswise. The string was attached to a point a 
little above the centre of the upright bow, and a very light 
Proceedings — Lit. & Phil. Soc. — Vol. XV. — No. 5. — Session 1875-6. 
