G.D. Wanner & F.M. Rogallo
Well before the Australians kick-started modern hang glider evolution, in January 1948, American toy kite inventor G.D. Wanner patented a diamond-shaped airfoil with solid leading edges. It closely resembled the standard rogallo hang glider that emerged a quarter century later.
Ten months later, in November 1948, NASA researcher F.M. Rogallo patented a 'Flexible Kite.' Its aerodynamics and structure have more in common with modern paragliders than the early rogallo wing hang gliders. NASA, however, used Rogallo's work, rather than Wanner's, as the basis for a number of research aircraft (built by Ryan and North American). These featured structures identical to what was to become known as the rogallo wing.
Dickenson, Bennett, & Moyes
The Australians Bill Moyes and Bill Bennett each founded the earliest hang glider manufacturing firms.
Bennett, like Moyes, started as a water skier and towed up behind boats in flat kites before the rogallo was adapted for man-carrying flight by fellow Australian John Dickenson.
Bill Bennett
Bennett moved to California in 1968 where his
Delta Wing Kites and Gliders manufactured hang gliders up to the late 1980s.
Bill Moyes
Auto electrician and water skier Bill Moyes took up flat-kite ski towing in 1962. After converting to rogallos, he sold his first glider in 1967.
Moyes Gliders, based in Australia, is still at the forefront of flexwing design and production.
'Topless' hang gliders are nothing new. The first rogallos were devoid of a king post and top rigging. (Why? Presumably because nobody thought of considering negative loads until, on windy British hills, gliders parked on the control frame base tube and with the nose resting on the ground, snapped in the center.) However, unknown to the Brits, Bill Moyes had first added 'negative rigging' in 1968. (It took three years to realise that leading edge deflexors were holding us back. It has taken thirty years to get rid of top rigging.)
Bill's son, Steve, has been at the top of hang gliding competition and development since 1975. According to an article on Moyes' web site ( http://www.moyes.com.au/ ):
This was the early 1970s where world champion surfers like Nat Young and Midget Farrelly were surfing beaches buck naked while philosophising about post-Vietnam freedom. The idea of flying off the headlands of those same beaches seemed to fit right in with the whole era.
Steve flew at the British championships held at Mere, Wiltshire, in summer 1976. A year after the American Wills Wing team won it in their Swallowtails, that year the Moyes Boys' Maxi Stingers outperformed Superswallowtails and Bennett Phoenix 6Bs.
Others
Many others not mentioned elsewhere in this web site, including Miles Handley (designer of the Gryphon), Volmer Jensen, Dave Kilbourne, Jack Lambie and Richard Miller, contributed to the evolution of hang gliding in its various forms.