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http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.06863

Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada --- Men hold Alexander Graham Bell's kite glider, The Frost King. --- Image by © National Geographic Creative/Corbis

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Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada --- An Alexander Graham Bell experimental kite flies above a field. --- Image by © Bell Collection/National Geographic Creative/Corbis

Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada --- Alexander Graham Bell's tetrahedral kite is towed on the water. --- Image by © National Geographic Creative/Corbis

1904, St. Louis, Missouri, USA --- Alexander Graham Bell, the Scotsman who invented the telephone, experimented with giant man-carrying kites during the first decade of the 20th Century. --- Image by © Corbis

In 1899, Scottish American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the man best known as the inventor of the telephone, began investigating the possibility of powered flight. To wit:

Inspired by the box kites of Australian [aeronautical pioneer] Laurence Hargrave, Bell began to multiply the lift-providing cells, creating compound structures of multiple kites.The basic problem of creating flying objects is that as a body’s surface area is squared, its weight is cubed, limiting the maximum size and lifting capability. Over the course of years experimenting at his Nova Scotia laboratory, Bell discovered that a tetrahedron — a three-dimensional prism of four triangular sides — could be useful.

READ ON: Bell’s Tetrahedral Kites (Mashable)

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