Mrs. Olsansky, the Half Day School music teacher, was a frequent target of paper airplanes. Landing on her ivories during “The Happy Wanderer.” Bonking the back of her head. Sailing past at eye-level. She spent 40 years under siege by grammar school Kamikazes.
Mrs. Olsansky and her bedevilment are subjects Ken Blackburn warms to when he hears the term “paper airplane.” Blackburn, the Guinness World Record holder for paper airplane time aloft at 27.6 seconds, remembers creating junior high dive-bombers out of notebook paper in Kernersville, N.C. (A plane isn’t proper, you understand, unless it’s folded from a sheet of 8 1/2- by 11-inch paper.)
The Guinness rules for paper airplane time aloft, for those who wonder, were written by the book’s co-founder Norris McWhirter and later revised by Andrew Chipling, a London engineer with a keen interest in the subject.
“The Guinness rules as written by Norris McWhirter were very basic, due in part to the amount of rules [for other events] he was involved in writing at the time, Chipling said. “I adapted them to make them better and clearer for everyone, as they excluded A4 paper [standard copier paper], which for the rest of the world was madness!” Chipling said.
Chipling remains steadfast on one point: All time-aloft record attempts must be made indoors. “Simple dynamic lift and thermals [wind currents] make it unfair to fly outside, however much more fun that is,” he said. “I have seen a folded piece of paper fly over one of our 11-story buildings [in London], and nobody even threw it!”
Blackburn’s a bit more laid back. He’s been fiddling with paper airplanes since he was a kid–simply because they’re fun. “Seventh grade is exactly when I became interested in folding paper airplanes,” said Blackburn, who grew up to become an aeronautical engineer with Boeing in St. Louis.
Blackburn demonstrated designs with names such as Vortex, Hammerhead and Condor at his annual paper airplane workshop this summer at the Chicago Children’s Museum.
“The appearance was a major hit,” said Leah Weatherspoon, the museum’s director of Public Relations. “There were two workshops at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and while the crowd was about 50 folks at 11 a.m., we had a solid 150-160 for 2 p.m. The best part is seeing not just the boys and girls, but also moms and dads, grandparents and nannies get into the act of creating paper airplanes and making them soar through the Great Hall.”
Elaine Bentley, Public Programs manager: “Ken Blackburn’s programs combine solid content about the physics of flight, interactive activities that engage children as well as adults, and a strong message about hard work and perseverance toward a goal. As a facilitator, Mr. Blackburn is a perfect fit for CCM’s mission of building a community where play and learning connect.”
Theories regarding the origin of the paper airplane vary. Keith Laux, author of “The World’s Greatest Paper Airplane & Toy Book” (McGraw-Hill, 1987), said the history is foggy.
“The first reference I found was in a 1931 issue of Scientific American. But let’s think about paper for a minute. We think paper was invented by the Chinese? . . . I’d bet the first paper planes, though they obviously weren’t called `planes,’ were done by the Chinese.”
Ian Leonard, writing at the creativebehavior.com Web site, mentions earlier references to paper airplane folding than Laux’s Scientific American piece. Leonard’s discussion page includes postings that cite examples of paper modeling dating to 1902. Leonard writes, “The first French paper planes were the Santos 14bis and the Dameselle [probably in 1906].”
Blackburn and co-author Jeff Lammers have published four books on paper airplanes and stick with a possible 1909 date also mentioned on Leonard’s Web page.
Their “World Record Paper Airplane Book” (Workman Publishing, 1994) has sold more than 750,000 copies in nine years, which continues to amaze Blackburn.
“I never anticipated this sort of interest,” he said. “I probably get one-to-five e-mails every night from kids who want to know about paper planes, and they all want to know which design is the best.”
Lammers insists the pair only wrote the first book because they couldn’t find much useful information in print. “Ken and I met while working at McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis [which later became part of Boeing],” he said. “We have both been interested in aviation since we were kids, and we hit it off quite well. In 1991, while driving across Kansas, we discussed our viewpoints of other existing paper airplane books. We agreed the selection was limited and thought we could do better. Ken and I are both pilots.”
Lammers passes on an opportunity to give specific folding instructions. “It’s very difficult to describe how to fold a plane with words alone. I think it would be more confusing than interesting.”
And here’s where Blackburn returns to his seventh grade roots.
“Never discount early inspirations,” he said, laughing. “The plane I use today is essentially the one I was folding at 13. The folds are a little different–but not very. Folds are only part of the package. Balance is extremely important and also whether or not a plane has the necessary amount of surface roughness to cause turbulence and lift. It’s the same principle as dimples on a golf ball. Disturb the air so it flows more completely around the ball, or, in my case, the paper airplane.”
One could almost hear the wheels turning, especially when Blackburn asked bout the airplane that knocked off Mrs. Olsansky’s eyeglasses in April 1969.
“Do you remember if the kid used paperclips along the nose of his plane?” he wanted to know. “If the plane hit hard enough to knock her glasses off, I’m betting he did. An airplane of that sort might work pretty well for a distance try–but I doubt it would be legal under Guinness rules. Not with paperclips [which add weight to the nose to make the plane more stable].”
Blackburn enlisted trainer to coax out winning throw
The record time aloft of 27.6 seconds for paper airplanes that Ken Blackburn has held since 1998 didn’t come easy.
His earlier attempts of 16.89 and 17.2 seconds were reached on the strength of the airplanes, he said, not the way he threw.
“My throwing mechanics needed help,” he said. “It’s like the golfer or baseball pitcher who’s fallen into bad habits. I worked with [athletic trainer] Dori Bucholz. She had me doing strengthening exercises for my shoulder and back to increase velocity, and we also worked on my motion and release point.”
Blackburn used large rubber bands for resistance conditioning and threw baseballs–hundreds of them. The proper motion for throwing a paper airplane is similar to that of a baseball pitch.
“Instead of coming overhand and striding through the pitch with a corresponding weight shift, I throw vertically. I have a windup. I spring forward and rotate my upper torso and lead with my elbow, and there’s a wrist-snap. But my follow-through is straight up, not straight ahead. All the torque is absorbed by my back–not my legs. You couldn’t keep this up year after year the way a baseball pitcher does. You’d wind up with serious back problems.”
Paper airplanes have been timed leaving Blackburn’s hand at 60 miles per hour.
His 27.6 time-aloft record has held for seven years, and he has no plans to better the figure. William Harlan Prior held the record from 1975 to 1985 with a time aloft of 15 seconds.
Of greater interest to Blackburn is the distance record held by Tony Felch, who threw his Nemesis glider 193 feet. “I’d have to go back into training and change my throw again–but it’s doable.”
Rules for setting a world record
Feel like challenging Ken Blackburn’s record for paper airplane time aloft?
The Guinness Book of World Records rules state:
– Only indoor flights are eligible.
– Two independent “scrutineers” (people of good character) must be appointed to handle the digital stopwatch and have authority to call foul when rules are breached.
– Ten attempts are permitted at one time. Fouls count as attempts.
– The aircraft must be constructed from one sheet of paper–either A4 or 8 1/2- by 11-inch copier paper weighing no more than 100 grams per square meter. (Blackburn uses regular copy paper, 20 or 24 pound, which he said is the norm. He said thinner paper such as tracing paper “floats nicely in the air” but is too flimsy for a hard throw. And heavier paper such as cardboard is too heavy to fly well and wouldn’t be permitted under the rules.)
– The aircraft must be launched by one person throwing unaided from a reasonably static position. (Run-ups or fast walks are not permitted.)
– Launch height depends upon the height of the thrower. (You can’t stand on anything.)
– Duration shall be measured by the scrutineers from the point in time when the aircraft leaves the thrower’s hand to the point in time when the aircraft first touches the floor.
– If the aircraft hits any object such as a wire or lighting during flight, time is recorded only until the point of contact.
