Paper Boomerang Book: Build Them, Throw Them, and Get Them to Return Every Time
9 a A throwing stick hieroglyph Australian nonreturning hook boomerang Recent History In Australia the first written account of the flight of a returning boomerang was made by Francis Louis Barrallier a French born surveyor and engineer who explored Australia for the British at
the start of the 19th century On its Web site www boomerang org au the Boomerang Association of Australia quotes Barrallier's journal entry from November 12 1802 They throw it on the ground or in the air making it revolve on itself and with such a velocity that one cannot see it returning towards the ground only the whizzing of it is heard The origin of the term boomerang can be traced to the Turuwal people who inhabited the area near modern day Port Jackson the harbor of Sydney Australia Apparently these people only referred to the returning throwing stick with the word boomerang they used other words to refer to nonreturning throwing sticks According to the Boomerang Association of Australia the first written account of the word bou mar rang was made in 1822 In the United States in the 1950s the general public did not think about boomerangs very often people regarded them mostly as curiosities But an article in the November 1968 issue of Scientific American magazine The Aerodynamics of Boomerangs by Felix Hess helped advance their popularity Hess covered the physics well and the accompanying photos which depicted boomerangs in flight enabled designers to begin thinking about more advanced designs In the early 1970s boomerang expert Benjamin Ruhe gave several lectures and conducted workshops with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D C Before they left the workshop attendees were given unfinished boomerangs Back home they would carve them using the skills they had learned Herb Smith one of the first high tech designers of boomerangs attended the 1976 workshop He is renowned for his advanced designs and long throws and he inspired a generation of boomerang enthusi asts to perfect their own designs Modern Boomerangs Modern boomerangs both returning and nonreturning come in many different shapes The boomerangs on pages 7 9 are all
Australian boomerangs except for those in the last photo which are by English boomerang designer Herb Smith On the right side of Herb Smith's long distance boomerang there are two small circular marks near the tip Those are weights that were inserted to increase the boomerang's range The effect of these weights will be discussed in chapter 9 Boomerang Theory Also as you can probably tell Smith's long distance boomerang is not made of wood Modern boomerangs are made of some of the following materials ply wood Finnish birch Baltic birch or marine thermoplastics polycarbonate ABS or polypropylene composite materials carbon fiber phenolic fiberglass paxolin or Kevlar and alu minum Northern Territory 1950s nonreturning 30 inches 1 2 pounds Northern Territory 1960s
ID Returning boomerang A surprising number of different shapes can be made that fly reasonably well The professional boomerangs on page 10 show some of the exotic and elegant shapes that modern returning boomerangs can take but they are only a few of the most com mon designs Some boomerangs are shaped like birds other ani mals question marks or even letters of the alphabet These MTA maximum time aloft boomerangs are specially engi neered to stay in the air for a long
