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A man-lifting kite is a kite designed to lift a person from the ground. Historically, man-lifting kites have been used chiefly for reconnaissance and entertainment. Interest in their development declined with the advent of powered flight at the beginning of the 20th century. ==Early history== The first records of man-lifting kites come from China. The (636) ''Book of Sui'' records that the tyrant Gao Yang, Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi (r. 550-559), executed prisoners by making them fly with bird-shaped kite wings (see ornithopter). For his Buddhist initiation ritual at the capital Ye, the emperor parodied the Buddhist ceremonial ''fangsheng'' 放生 "releasing caged animals (usually birds and fish)". On one occasion the emperor visited the Tower of the Golden Phoenix to receive Buddhist ordination. He caused many prisoners condemned to death to be brought forward, had them harnessed with great bamboo mats (籧篨 ) as wings, and ordered them to fly down to the ground (from the top of the tower). This was called a 'liberation of living creatures'. All the prisoners died, but the emperor contemplated the spectacle with enjoyment and much laughter.〔Joseph Needham and Ling Wang, 1965, (''Science and civilisation in China: Physics and physical technology, mechanical engineering'' Volume 4, Part 2 ), page 587.〕 The (1044) ''Zizhi Tongjian'' records that in 559, all the condemned kite test pilots died except for Eastern Wei prince Yuan Huangtou. Gao Yang made Yuan Huangtou (Huang-Thou ) and other prisoners take off from the Tower of the Phoenix attached to paper (kites in the form of) owls. Yuan Huangtou was the only one who succeeded in flying as far as the Purple Way, and there he came to earth.〔Conan Alistair Ronan, 1994, (''The shorter science and civilisation in China: an abridgement of Joseph Needham's original text, Volume 4, Part 2'' ), Cambridge University Press, p. 285.〕 The Purple Way (紫陌) road was 2.5 kilometres from the approximately 33-metre Golden Phoenix Tower (金凰台). These early manned kite flights presumably "required manhandling on the ground with considerable skill, and with the intention of keeping the kites flying as long and as far as possible."〔Ronan, 1994, p. 285.〕 In a story about the Japanese thief Ishikawa Goemon (1558–1594), he used a man-lifting kite to allow him to steal the golden scales from a pair of ornamental fish images which were mounted on the top of Nagoya Castle. His men manoeuvered him into the air on a trapeze attached to the tail of a giant kite. He flew to the rooftop where he stole the scales, and was then lowered and escaped. In the 17th century, Japanese architect Kawamura Zuiken used kites to lift his workmen during construction. George Pocock, who invented a kite-drawn buggy in 1822, had previously used kites as a method of lifting men to inaccessible cliff tops, but it was not until around the 1880s that there was serious interest in developing man-lifting kites. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Man-lifting kite」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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