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Rogallo hang gliders have payload masses hung from a gliding wing that had
been significantly influenced by the flowering leadership of Francis M.
Rogallo.
"Rogallo hang glider" is a meta descriptor under which one finds
builders adding their own local meaningful names. Rogallo hang glider
builders and users might find themselves calling their Rogallo hang
gliders a NASA paraglider, a Prentice string triangle control hang glider,
a Palmer glider, a Burns Ski-Plane kite-glider, a Miller glider, a Bat
Glider, a Batso, an Omega glider, an Eipper-Formance glider, a Bennett
delta wing glider, a ski-kite Dickenson kite-glider, a sport Standard
Rogallo, a Paresev paraglider, a paraglider, a Rog, a "rod," etc.
The leadership of Francis Rogallo that radiated throughout the world was
rooted in patents, speeches, conferences, white papers, talks, memos,
projects, investments, discussions, loaned NASA reports, photographs,
reports, models, flight demonstrations, and more.
Publishers, people, hobbyists, designers, builders, users, etc. extended
that body of leadership to far corners of the world, much of which is very
traceable in the literature.
One may wonder just what time-and-place arrangements let one man's
influence be so emphatic. For answers, one looks to the flow of large
historical factors: NACA, NASA, Russian Sputnik, space race, reentry
solution drive, war, freedom, kiting, desire to fly like the birds, model
aircraft flowering, serendipity of places ... combined with material
access, dreams to revisit strongly earlier hang gliding solutions, and
more.
Smaller historical factors came to play also; a kite hobbyist Rogallo who
was an aeronautical engineer
Stanford-University-trained-restricted-from-regular-aircraft-flying-by-health-reasons
communicator, tinkerer-builders like Palmer and Prentice,
dreaming-building Soaring Magazine editor Richard Miller, an itchy
aqua-kite showmen coordinating with NASA-Rogallo info streams in the hands
of
airman Mike Burns of Australia, jumping-flying Olympian kitist, Dacron,
aluminum tubing, bamboo, gifts from the past like the 1908 Breslau
cable-stayed triangle control frame (TCF) that remains true-to-form
over 100 years after a gliding club's use in a hang glider, etc..--all
these matters and timed flows of action gave foundation for writers,
publishers, designers, sportsmen, and hobbyists to give homage to Francis
M. Rogallo with the use of the terms Rogallo wing, Rogallo hang glider,
Rogallo ski-kite, Rogallo aqua-glider, Rogallo hang glider,
Rogallo
paraglider, Rogallos, etc. All such was an overlay on history
that has blossoms flying today.
In the 1940s aeronautical engineer Francis M. Rogallo was working
professionally and at home on wing matters. He invented a purely flexible
wing that when stiffened revisited early kites and gliders of the 1800s and
first decades of 1900s; but because of his time and place and his actions
of leadership in the midst of times of space-race needs, the fully
flexible and stiffened Rogallo wing received millions of dollars of
research attention and the care-to-tinker hours of thousands of people
around the world at nearly a dozen levels of glider genre: art, models,
model powered craft, principle demonstrators, governable parachutes,
space-craft-depolyables, man-carrying hang glider Paresev project kite
gliders, parawing toys, parawing parachutes, towed kite-gliders, towed
ski-kite pontooned aqua gliders, towed ski-kite gliders, 1960
string-controlled framed Prentice hang glider, 1961c Palmer's seven or
eight modifications (including in-front-of-pilot-triangle control frame),
powered payload-delivering Rogallo-wing gliders, and much more for
military and peaceful uses.
Tinkerers later would come up with quick builds and feel that old-time
important and exciting invention feeling while their actions had roots in
the NASA-flowered radiance of information and image that had Francis
Rogallo drawn into the exciting soup and swirl of building, flying, and
discussing. Thus a popular revolution, one then magazine:\ gave a title: "Rogallo
Revolution" placed Rogallo and NASA-spread images and reports into the
hands of experts and hobbyist sportsmen throughout the world. The
enthusiasm of users of those decades would even find themselves
anachronistically calling 1904 Frenchmen Jan Lavezzari's flexible-wing
hang glider a "Rogallo hang glider" in homage to their experience
with what flowed from the Rogallo Revolution; such anachronistic
play need not detract from the exploratory findings of the
turn-of-the-century French; both flows may joyfully dance in the history
of gliders with hung masses.
And that many from 1908 through 1950s would uncover the utility of the
1908 cable-stayed triangle control frame (TCF) for manned hang glider
use is just another happy part of the full Rogallo hang glider story. The
use of the TCF was evident in almost all aircraft in one modification or
another, mostly relegated to the important use of an undercarriage for
taking off and landing; however Pilcher, Beeson,, Breslau pilot,
Santos-Dumont, Spratt, Benson, and others made special pointed use of the
TCF. Then others would later follow the known arts.
Francis Rogallo was positively many things, but he was not a
comprehensivist as regards hang glider invention historicity; and in his
own enthusiasm one finds misappropriation of "invention" declarations.
Clearly the French 1904 Berck Beach use of a Jan Lavezzari stiffened
flexible-wing hang glider meant that at least by 1904 flexible-wing
gliders were understood by those skilled in the arts of wings and gliders;
indeed, one finds flexible wing gliders made and used in the first decade
of 1800s and before by such as Cayley and Walker. Frederick William
Brearey of 1880 is to examined and credited also. And the Beeson patent of
1887 clearly records use of weight-shift control of the pendulumed-massed
pilot on a stiffened flexible-wing kite-glider. The full story of Rogallo
more resides in a fortuitous combination of many circumstances combined
with his own leadership actions. All are invited to help tell the story of
Rogallo hang gliders.
It is certain that many people from many countries made contributions
to the development of the flexible wing hang glider. In the aviation
context of 'first flights' and recreational vs. commercial developments,
it must be noted that new and old inventions often complement in synergy;
it is in this evolutionary and social context that the crucial
developments put together by Sir George Cayley, Percy Pilcher, Otto
Lilienthal, Octave Chanute, William Beeson, Francis Rogallo, Igor Bensen,
Richard Miller, Barry Palmer, Volmer Jensen, Mike Burns, John Dickenson,
Bill Bennett, Bill Moyes, Bill Moyes, Joe Faust, Irv Culver, Dave
Kilbourne, Roy Haggard, and others were the ones that were most successful
and influential on the evolution of hang gliding.
