Kite · Pioneers
1984
The inflatable kite is patented
Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux file a patent for a kite with an inflatable frame that can be relaunched from the water, the design kitesurfing is built on.
US 4,708,078, Fig. 10 (1987) · public domain
Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux, two brothers from Quimper in Brittany, were keen sailors who had cruised as far as Senegal. They were looking for something faster than windsurfing, and a catamaran pulled by kites had set them thinking.
On 16 November 1984 they filed a French patent for a very light wing shaped like a segment of a sphere. Its frame was inflatable: a leading tube and a few crosswise struts, covered by a flexible skin. Two control lines ran from the wing tips through a pulley on the rider’s harness. The stated aim was a kite that could be launched from the water without outside help.
In April 1985 they showed it at the speed week in Brest on home-made plywood skis and won a prize for ingenuity. In 1987 they demonstrated a 17 square metre kite at the funboard World Cup, and on 24 November that year the United States granted the patent.
The inflatable leading edge became the basis of the modern kite. Some 75 later patents cite theirs.