Facts About Paper Airplane Gliders

History

• Paper airplane gliders may be related to kites originally, but that isn't known for sure. Leonardo DaVinci was known to be interested in flight, but according to the San Diego Aerospace Museum, whether he actually tried to fly a paper plane is unverified. Not much else is on record until the 1800s, when experimentors such as George Cayley tried flying linen gliders. Paper airplane gliders appeared at some point in the early 1900s.

Advantages of Paper

• Before World War II, toy planes usually used balsa wood as their main material. The war siphoned balsa wood supplies away from the general public, and toy manufacturers turned to paper. While this may have seemed like a deprivation on the surface, as paper isn't as aerodynamic as carved balsa wood, it is technically stronger than balsa wood when you account for the scale of the plane. According to AviationExplorer.com, "a sheet of office-quality 80 gsm photocopier/laser printer paper, for example, has the in-scale strength of aircraft-grade aluminum," and paper gliders have proven to be acceptable substitute models for real-life planes when testing new designs. In fact, Jack Northrup, one of the founders of Lockheed, used paper models to investigate new ideas for planes.

Advanced Planes

• The different ways to fold a piece of paper into a plane, or attach tabs and panels for a paper plane from a kit, are more than aesthetics. These variations can affect how the plane flies and what type of tricks it can do. Manufacturers and enthusiasts alike refined planes into far-flying models, such as Whitewings and Paper Pilot gliders.

Paper Helicopters

• Paper helicopters joined paper airplane gliders in 1967. As with gliders, the helicopters had different models. They had rotating blades on axles and depending on the model, could fly for up to 49 feet. The earliest model simply floated downward, but later models actually propelled themselves forward.

Record Flights

• Paper airplane gliders aren't limited to toys or simple weekend hobbies; they're used to aim for history books as well. In 1992, NASA built a record-breaking paper glider with a wingspan of 30 feet 6 inches. In May 2009, the world record for length of time in the air was set by Takuo Toda of Japan, whose paper plane glided along for 27.9 seconds.