History
Rogallo had been interested in the flexible wing since 1945. He and his wife built and flew kites as a hobby and, since they could not find official backing for the wing (including at Rogallo's employer NACA), carried out experiments in their own time. By the end of 1948 they had two working designs using a flexible wing - a kite (which they called "Flexi-Kite") and a gliding parachute (which they later referred to as a "paraglider"). Rogallo and his wife received a patent on a "V-shaped" flexible wing in March 1951. Selling the Flexi-kite as a toy helped to finance their work and publicize the design.
Read more about this topic: Rogallo Wing
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)