On a sunny day in 1919, seven-year-old Francis Rogallo saw a two-seater airplane flying over the small Californian town of Sanger. Since then, his favorite toys were handmade paper and wood model kites, and flying became an obsession. Pilot courses were very expensive, so he had to invent a flying device that didn’t require a pilot’s license.
After school, Francis decided to join the army. He wasn’t attracted to a military career, but he passionately wanted to fly. However, he was rejected at the medical examination. As a result, he enrolled at Stanford to become, naturally, an aviation engineer.
After graduating in 1935, Francis joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA) in Langley and began working on improving aircraft designs. But his dream was still far from being realized, even though pilot friends often took him along as a passenger.
A few years later, Rogallo developed slotted flaps, and Piper Aircraft invited him to help install them on planes. The company gave him a few piloting lessons, but on the day of his first solo flight, fate intervened again. The plane he was supposed to fly caught fire in the air and crashed on the way to the airfield.
After World War II, Francis became interested in improving the aerodynamics of kites, using his knowledge and the lab’s wind tunnels. As one of his colleagues later recalled, he once prophetically said, “Someday, kites will be big enough to lift a person into the air.”
His superiors did not approve of these activities, but Rogallo built a wind tunnel at home and began studying sail designs, wondering if they could be turned into wings. He tested models made from calico curtains on the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
Soon, he and his wife (and colleague) Gertrude realized that such a wing did not require masts or a skeleton and could maintain its shape solely due to the airflow. In 1948, they applied for a patent for a flexible wing (which they received in 1951). Unfortunately, neither the public nor companies showed interest in the new wing design, and by 1957, the Rogallos had sold only 7,000 toy kites.
Everything changed on October 4, 1957, with the launch of the first Soviet satellite. Rogallo’s design allowed the wing to be packed into a very small volume, making it ideal for returnable spacecraft. NASA began large-scale experiments. In 1961, Popular Mechanics wrote about Rogallo’s wing, adding a note: “Do not try this on your own!”.
Fortunately, one reader, engineer Tom Purcell, ignored the advice and built what is now known as a hang glider: a device with a flexible 5-meter wing, an aluminum frame, and a pilot’s seat. He soon met Rogallo, and the inventor was amazed at how accurately Purcell had copied the design from the magazine pages. In 1965, 53-year-old Francis Rogallo flew for the first time in a flying device of his own design, towed by a boat. The path to his dream took 47 years.