Benjamin Franklin
Recipient of  Flex-Wing Hang Glider Gold Air Award by World Hang Gliding Association.

• wiki: Benjamin Franklin 
   
• As part of his inspiration George Pocock cites Benjamin Franklin for Ben's hanging from a kite's wing's tether for moving across water surfaces where Ben's body would be a wing in a fluid (water) in a free-flight-flowing dynamic system using stiffened flexible wing (set here in modern terms over the laconic shorter: "pulled by kite across the pond."
   
• Benjamin Franklin's story of his youth of tethering a wing to his body (second wing) for transporting himself in a dynamic free-moving kite system has resulted in forming him as a kind of grandfather to hanging by tether from stiffened flexible wings for the purpose of free-moving in fluids.   He would later suggest pulling ships by kites.  Though his lightning experiments might be receiving more press and art image, his seeding hang gliding and traction by kite are recognized. Two or more wings coupled by tether was somehow embedded in Ben's psyche; and he did something about such kite.
   

• The True Benjamin Franklin, by Sydney George Fisher  See book.

• http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2013/10/31/lifestyle/travel/754819.txt

• franklinpapers.org/franklin//
• http://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/findingaid215franklin.pdf
• http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/franklin/loc.html
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• "swimming anchor"  and other similar devices. In an unpublished letter: To Julien-David LeRoy (unpublished)
  [February 1784], Benjamin Franklin carefully described things for the water that operate as a kite in the air but with different dimensions and sized for use by different sized ships.  Essentially he was describing water kites or paravanes. This is a remarkable early attention on paravanes.  The full description can read in the letter as presented by at franklinpapers.org     Search "kite" is one route to the full text.   This source has about 64 items that hold "kite".
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• Elementary story of the pond traction kiting: http://www.soundcityreading.com/rsstories5-6.pdf
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