een
actually accomplished. September 18, 1895, in England, Captain
Baden-Powell was lifted to a height of one hundred feet on a
kite-string supported by five large hexagon kites. But Mr. Eddy
calculates that to lift a man of the same weight (one hundred and
fifty pounds) to a height of fifteen hundred feet, with a wind blowing
at the same rate (twenty miles an hour), would require seven kites
with upright and cross-sticks not less than sixty-four feet each in
length.

The only other instance on record where a man has been lifted by a
kite-cord was in the experiment of the great Australian kite expert,
Hargrave, who, on November 12, 1894, placed himself in a sling seat
attached to a tandem of his wonderful box kites, and was swung sixteen
feet clear of the earth. The entire load, including the seat and
appurtenances, amounted to two hundred and eight pounds. Mr. Eddy
calculates that six of his bird-shaped kites, twenty feet in diameter,
would lift a man and basket in safety to a height of one hundred feet,
assuming the wind to be blowing steadily at twenty miles an hour.

[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPHING FROM A KITE-LINE.

NOTE.--In this picture the square box suspended from the upper line is
the camera. The ball hanging from the camera is the burnished signal
which, by its fall, informs the operator on the ground when the
shutter of the camera has opened. The shutter and the ball are
controlled from the ground by the lower line.]

THE METEOROLOGICAL USE OF KITES.

Although Mr. Eddy began flying kites as a diversion, he soon saw that
there were more serious reasons for continuing his experiments. Having
long been interested in meteorological problems, it occurred to him
that good results might be obtained by sending aloft, on kite-strings,
self-registering thermometers and apparatus for indicating the
direction and strength of the air currents. On February 4, 1891, he
sent up what is believed to be the first thermometer ever attached
to a kite for scientific purposes. This was at nine o'clock in the
evening on a cold winter's night, the thermometer registering ten
degrees Fahrenheit at the ground. On reading the record after the
descent, the thermometer was found to mark six degrees Fahrenheit,
which indicated, according to the recognized law of decrease of
temperature, that the kite had been sent to a height of one thousand
feet. The law is that in ascending from the earth the temperature
falls one degree for every