I am creating a digital catalogue of artifacts and prototypes of flexible wings created by Francis Rogallo. Most of the artifacts that the Rogallo Foundation has are stored in a finished garage, as the foundation is accumulating funds with the intent to have a museum to house and display the prototype wings and documents.
This was the scene that greeted me day one, walking into the building for the first time. Impressive. Wow. Where to start? I began work the next day. Opened up the first box and was greeted with fifteen kites. I had talked with Mr. Harris, and another person working with the foundation, Billy Vaughn. I was instructed to go through the boxes, describe what was contained in them, and photograph the items. I log the kites by color, number of lines, number of keels (center sets of lines) special characteristics (such as nose shape or extra pockets) and most of the kites already have a designated number written on them from when they were made.
The kite on the left is Wing 1, one of the early prototype kites Rogallo made. The center is Wing 72R, with a reefed sail compared to the other Wing 72, this kite is more typical of most of the prototypes I have observed. On the right is the airfoil parawing, found in bag 118. This wing is very interesting because it is a full fabric airfoil, much like a modern paraglider or square parachute. It is amazing to see the developement, changes, improvements, and generations of designs of flexible wings.
A sample of what I am inputing into the database: Wing 72R : Yellow, 30 line, reefed, two keel. I then take a picture, refold the kite, and continue to the next prototype. After I complete a box, I put the items back into the box and tape a note to the outside stating box number, contents, and my initials.
I have been moving completed boxes out of the main room and onto the shelves in the closet seen in the room picture. As I have sorted through several boxes, I have come across other interesting items, such as the model space capsules with paraglider recovery (previous post), and others like the portable type writer that belonged to the Rogallo family and a test dummy pilot used with early human flyable wings. There are also boxes of bulk items, boxes of kite string, nylon, mylar, unused packing tubes, and instruction manuals; which moves a lot of volume through the cataloguing process fairly quickly.
(Example: box of unused Flexikite tubes – a buisness venture based on Rogallo’s flexible wing concept, the product was not amazingly successful and I have seen several boxes of unused tubes so far, and a box of Flexikite instruction manuals, still sealed from the print shop)
Rogallo Foundation Internship 2016 