Hang Glider Inventors Club. Inventors of Modern Hang Gliders

Did you invent some improvement in a hang glider or hang glider system?
Was the invention a basic mechanical sort or an artistic appearance sort?

Those who have invented mechanically or ornamentally:
(DATA IS GROWING as people send in data; send in description and rationale and evidence.) Send data to: Lift@HGAusa.com

Hang glider Inventor	Mechanical invention description	Ornamental appearance innovations
Otto Lilienthal	Mechanical: Collapsible folding pilot-carriable monoplane hang glider. Also a biplane hang glider. .	Appearance: Birdlike appearance Biplane
Percy Pilcher	Mechanical: Integrated triangle for both kingpost and queen posts and thus giving a strong precursor to the Breslau territory's cable-stayed modern triangle control frame or A-frame where in 1908 a hang glider pilot in a stiffened flexible-wing hang glider used hung pilot behind a operated triangle control bar that found high use in later popular renaissance hang gliding.	Appearance: Bat like
Octave Chanute	Mechanical:
John Joseph Montgomery	Mechanical:	Appearance:
Member of the 1908 Breslau territory gliding club Schlesischer Flugsport Club	Mechanical: Cable-stayed triangle control frame with pilot hung behind the A-frame. This came after an evolution of various pilot-control holds and framings. This simplification gave mechanical root to the choice that is seen today. We are still wondering if this innovation was found before this 1908 instruction; we are open for earlier instances.	Appearance: Combination lines of battened-ribbed flexible-wing with TCF and aft-TCF hung pilot. Precursor of later stiffened "Rogallo" family of gliders.
Weiss	Mechanical:	Appearance:
Volmer Jensen	Mechanical:	Appearance:
Horten Brothers	Mechanical:	Appearance:
NASA engineers	Mechanical:	Appearance:
	Mechanical:	Appearance:
	Mechanical:	Appearance:
Francis M. Rogallo	Mechanical:	Appearance:
Domina Jalbert	Mechanical:


Tony Prentice	Mechanical: Hybrid hang-para glider in 1960 at age 13 years. hybrid kite glider Pilot was lifted in an all-tether system and al-tether control system.	Appearance: Bamboo frame with all-tether hang system including a triangle control tensional form that made fully flexible the control system and hang system.
Barry Hill Palmer	Mechanical:	Appearance:
Mike Burns	Mechanical: Perhaps combination of floats on paraglider (term then used in prior NASA framed Rogallo wing).	Appearance: Boat-tow of NASA paraglider with use of earlier-known triangle control frame (TCF) in aqua-glider kite Ski Plane.
John Dickenson 1963-68	Mechanical: Maybe he was first for take-off and landing mechanism functionality of one-ski for feet for ski-kiting on water surfaces; one ski was less drag and less-to-do than two skis *for the already* world-around-known *mechanicals*: that is, the earlier NASA "paraglider" (term used in that time for a framed Rogallo wing), the use by earlier in 1962 Mike Burns of similar, and the Breslau 1908 triangle control frame (TCF) system with pilot hung behind the triangle, thus a true kite system whether secondarily tethered or in free-flight kiting.	Appearance: Small connector for towing by boat and one-ski appearance. Single ski for take-off in remote-mooring kiting take-off and landing.
Bill Moyes	Mechanical:	Appearance
Bill Bennett William Edward Bennett	Mechanical:	Appearance: Ornamental design (not mechanical) Patent number: D224248 Filed: Sep 24, 1969
Richard Boone	Mechanical:
Dave Cronk	Mechanical:






Roy Haggard	Mechanical:
Ilyin Vladimir Leonidovich (UA)	Mechanical: 1998, August.
	This file has just been started. Over 100 inventors and patents will be posted. Be sure to send in data that meets your interests. Give text that discusses mechanical invention vs. artistic appearance invention (most any gross line appearance change qualifies formally for appearance invention). E-mail to: Lift@HGAusa.com