• The pre-Rogallo hang gliders that "look" like they might have come post-Rogallo  revolution have been anachronistically noted by some contemporary users as "Rogallo" hang gliders out of respect for the cause of the sensitivity to form and function that arrived in the commenting persons, which cause was a rooting of experience from the Rogallo Wing Revolution. No harm is done regarding the pre-Rogallo era in seeing the French, etc. knowing and using flexible wing hang gliders. Comment can thus be bifurcated for some instances of mechanical occurrence where two things rise in comment, one from the awareness of the post-Rogallo wing revolution, and one from a respect of the actual historical time of mechanical showing.   Look to Whitehead and Beeson for stark Rogallo anachronisms!  Look to the hang gliders of Berck-sur-Mer for Rogallo anachronisms!    And find--in at least 1908--in a hang glider the most simple control arrangement: cable-stayed triangle control frame or A-frame! That A-frame was used morphed into almost all later powered aircraft as an undercarriage landing device with wheels and skids, perhaps the most ubiquitous frame part of aviation! We certainly do not let narrow self-serving orgs like FAI to constrain what is a hang glider; FAI has fallen into disrepute for its very low scrutiny of facts over hang gliding history matters.  The rich history of hang gliding shows a flow over several centuries, a sport flow into three centuries, a commercial flow into three centuries; in the middle third of the second of the three centuries came a Rogallo Revolution in which enthusiasm played to spark an exponential growth in participation in hang gliding; the Rogallo influence played a giant part in the grand play. 
  •     The tension of agents that get stuck shorting parts of hang gliding history is used for doing a sharper performance. All works will have phrasings that may be improved. And showing multiple perspectives well is ever a challenge.  All are invited to sharpen the text and presentation of this  and our associated sites on hang gliders. Write to notes@hanggliderhistory.com  with your images, notes, links, and comments. Thank you.   ~JoeF
     
  • The pure inventive fully-limp canopy ram-air Rogallo wing may well have helped Domina Jalbert advance into sharp-profiled two-layered-celled canopy wings; Jalbert advance was so strong that a Jalbert parafoil wing revolution began to give canopy hang gliders a surge; tie this to the Barish Rogallo-wing influence to get canopy hang gliding (paragliding in the sport realm).  In such perspective, the Rogallo wing revolution continued to flower into its limp-canopy branches.  We received a neat comment that seems close to this matter:
     
    • All I know is that from as far back as I can remember I've wanted to fly.   Probably my first experience of actual flight, apart from in my mind, was as a small boy holding out my coat on the sea wall into a very strong wind and jumping to the shingle below.  In Stephan's book he has a photo of someone doing much the same with a blanket from a hill side.
      
      Nature shows that a simple stretched membrane between the limbs can become a glider as in the flying squirrel. The water ski kites serve the same function mechanically. Early "birdmen" used their limbs in freefall with a stretched membrane before resorting to the parachute for landing.
      
      The backs of my school exercise books were full of all manner of flying devices. S  ome were built as models with varying degrees of success. A double skin ram inflated wing was tried which, as far as I know, predated any other such devices.  
      
      The thrill of taking to the air is still strong in me and passing this on to others is reward enough without the need for FAI recognition.   
      ~ Tony Prentice, 15 Jan 2013
       
• The 1940s and 1950s Rogallo wing hang gliders from the hands of Francis Rogallo and Gertrude S. Rogallo.
   
• A story of 1955 in Indonesia. Water ski-kite (boat tow), indeterminate if there was Rogallo influence or not.
   
• The direct Francis Rogallo kites and gliders that he made and demonstrated to inform the NASA and NASA-extended community in the late 1950s and the early 1960s; these kites and hang gliders and Francis' direct communications and showings rooted a revolution that would not stop growth and influence.
   
• Tony Prentice, age 13, in 1960 crafting of a hang glider, was not Francis-Rogallo inspired. Prentice's later hang gliders became informed gradually by the flow of Rogallo-revolution literature and images. But here is applied the above awareness where some commenting persons will have a right and rationale to anachronistically look at what Tony Prentice did in 1960 and say "Rogallo wing hang glider" while respecting that Prentice was inspired by non-Rogallo kite influences.     Interview 
   
• John Worth "wrote the book on Rogallo Wing"
• Timeline of John Worth's intersection with Rogallo Wing
• Building the "Cootie" by John Worth
• Peter F. Girard
• Jim Hobson in 1962. On TV.  The Hobson one-person hang glider was a Rogallo hang glider.
  Editor of EAA's esteemed magazine Sport Aviation easily wrote without apology: "Rogallo Wing Hang Glider"
• Woods and Blazek in 1962 had Rogallo hang gliders.
• Struck
• Cecil Craigo,
• Ryan Rogallo Hang Gliders ... a wide series for various missions
• Apollo Paraglider, a Rogallo hang glider
• Gemini Rogallo hang gliders         | Coming Home, new book, 2012, clip |
• The Paresev Rogallo Hang Gliders
• Rogallo Wings in Brazil
• Barry Hill Palmer, co-pioneering mid-century renaissance hang glider pilot
• U. S. Army Rogallo hang gliders
• U. S. Marines Rogallo hang gliders
• Rockwell Rogallo hang gliders
• Mike Burns in 1962-3  designed and built and flew Rogallo kite-gliders      FolderOne  |   FolderTwo  |  image  | 
• Miller's Rogallo hang gliders.
• Barish Glide Wing was actually a Rogallo hang glider (canopy paraglider hang glider), as Barish's developments were influenced by the fully-flexible base Rogallo wing canopy; he widened and segmented the Rogallo wing canopy; his improvements and refinements were novel.  David Barish.
• Dickenson ski kites were Rogallo kites and then eventually Rogallo ski-kite hang gliders  (He and his campaigner forward loudly an infamous false invention set of claims, while the facts indicate roots in the Rogallo flow, and no mechanical global invention novelty, as the wing and all parts and function were extant and in the public domain already solidly. Even the simple triangle control bar or A-frame cable-stayed was fully in hang gliders in 1908; swing seats were patented by several before 1910.)
• Klaus Hill Rogallo hang glider
• Moyes' kites were also used as Rogallo hang gliders.
• Bennett's kites were used also as Rogallo hang gliders.
• Kiceniuk Rogallo hang gliders
• Seagull Aircraft Rogallo hang gliders
• Koman-Faust Rogallo hang glider.   Dial-Soap hang glider.
• Kilbourne's Kilbo-Kite was a Rogallo hang glider. The plans were forwarded to 23 nations by Self-Soar Association in its Low & Slow publishing flow; this spawned a huge manufacturing flowering throughout the world following the big mover-and shaker Otto Meet on May 23, 1971, picked up by National Geographic, Los Angeles Times, and more.
• Eipper-Formance Rogallo hang gliders
• Cronk's Rogallo hang gliders
• Haggard's Rogallo hang gliders
• Boone's Rogallo hang gliders
• v
• v

Rogallo hang glider notes are welcome: Notes@RogalloHangGliders.com

===========================================
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.

Send your notes, images, etc. to Notes@RogalloHangGliders.com  to help grow this reflection.

Inspired by the long service of WindSports and SeedWings and Mike Burns. 

• Flexible Paraglider Wing Research and Development      1962
• Paresev Air Tow from Rogers Dry Lake
• Trike using Breslau 1908 TCF with high-aspect ratio batten-rib DS flying wing evolved from Paresev Rogallo wing:  "Short field landing"
• Rogallo
• Paraglider Deployment Research
•  

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.

See: http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1961/1961%20-%200723.html  Flight 1 June 1961.    On May 23, 1961 (Otto Lilienthal's birthday)  ... the article notes the maiden flight of the shown hang glider piloted by Lou Everett.  See Flight's March, 1961 issue for some coverage of the Flex-Wing. When power is off: the craft: hang glider.

Harris L. Woods and John Blazek
and their flex-wing glider in 1962. 
Call for full history. Anyone?
Thanks for any help on this one. 
Woods-Blazek Flexionic Glider
Several made. 
Then they were also aiming at adding power. 
Kite-glider. 
NASA-Rogallo, etc. appearing inspired.

Full story should be interesting. They built and flew their kite-hang-glider. 
They, by Sept, 1962, had been 
working out plans and possible kits to offer
for sale. So, did they do the plans? Did they sell any?
Are the two guys still living?
Ohio, USA.

Only references, so far: 
In 2008, the matter was discussed some in hang gliding history circles without photos and details. 
Now some photos appear on the table in the Sport Aviation magazine of 1962. 
Sport Aviation, September, 1962.

Tag: JD, GH, template, Rogallo wing hang glider. 

From the book we see the author rehearsing things about the man who would get Engineer of the Year and also win the Kremer prize in man-powered flight, Dr. Paul MacCready:

• Paul MacCready, sailplane soaring luminary  [[MacCready Speed-to-Fly Ring calculator for soaring]] had a first hang glider flight in a Rogallo-Palmer-Miller Bamboo Butterfly in 1969.
• At the Lilienthal meet in Newport Beach, CA on May 23, 1971, the author writes that Paul was towed up in Taras Kiceniuk's Batso hang glider [[a Rogallo hang glider]]. The author did not note that the cord used for that towing was brought to the meet by Joe Faust to supply such actions as needed.  
• Two years after the Otto meet, a 3/4 sized version of the Batso was made on which two other sons of Dr. Paul MacCready learned to fly.
• 

Aerotowing Rogallo Hang Gliders. Pilot-Induced Oscillation & Lockout Index.