E. Douglas Archibold

In 1833, a British meteorologist, E. D. Archibold, started using kites to lift anemometers to measure wind speed at various altitudes. Meteorological observatories around the world used kites to lift instruments thousands of feet into the air. This gave a great deal of information about the atmosphere, and vastly improved the weather forecasting of the time. Kites were to continue in this role until the mid 1930s, when aircraft and radiosonde balloons finally replaced them.

In 1887, Archibold was the first person to take an aerial photograph from a kite, an application that is still practiced today. Kites have been used as a cheap alternative method of obtaining aerial photographs of archeological sites, reefs, and the remains of shipwrecks. A photograph taken from even a comparatively short distance above ground level can show details not readily apparent from the ground.