Francis Rogallo

For the next six years, the Rogallos tried ceaselessly to attract both government and industry interest in their flexible wing, and they licensed a manufacturer in Connecticut to sell a kite based on it.

When the DuPont company announced the development of Mylar in 1952, Rogallo immediately saw how superior it would be for his kite, and the five-dollar toy "Flexikite" became one of the first products to use the plastic material.

[8] A key wing configuration applying Francis Rogallo's leadership that gave base to kited gliders with hung pilots using weight-shift control was designed by Charles Richards and constructed by the Richards team in 1961–2; such wing became a template for recreational use or Rogallo's inventions, ending up mechanically and ornamentally in Skiplane, ski-kites, and hang gliders of the 1960–1975.

That task of lightening and tweaking what the Paresev team had done with the Rogallo wing was taken up by independent designers around the world: Barry Palmer in 1961, Richard Miller, Thomas Purcell, and Australian Mike Burns were among the first to tap the technology for manned personal-craft glider/kite use.

Francis Rogallo died at home on September 1, 2009, in Southern Shores, North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of aviation.