Ancient Web: Sky Visions Put Fighter Kites Beside IBM Mainframe Simulators

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

A site containing both handmade fighter kites and Burroughs B5500 computer emulators may sound like someone combined two browser bookmarks by mistake. At Sky Visions, both belong to Richard Cornwell.

Visit Sky Visions.

The homepage describes itself plainly as a personal collection of interests: kites, computers, woodworking, and music. The footer of its kite-plans section carries a copyright range beginning in 1995. Instead of forcing the hobbies into separate websites, the navigation gives each a doorway.

The kite pages document the kites Cornwell has made, models designed when he ran Sky Vision Kites, a fighter-kite photo gallery, and a photo essay on making a pair of fighter kites from scraps. The plans page admits that detailed patterns for some of his designs have not yet been posted and that older dual-line designs may be dated.

That sort of unfinished aside belongs to the personal web. It is the author's running workshop, not an instruction manual that pretends all projects are finished.

Old computers are also things worth flying again

The other half of the site is an ambitious computing-history cabinet. Cornwell says he has developed simulators for IBM's 7000-series mainframes, the Burroughs B5500, and DEC's PDP-10 in its KA and KI variants. He also describes reconstructing or recovering software including OMNITAB II, CTSS, and early TOPS-10 material.

These projects concern systems that often survive through documentation, original media, and specialized emulator work rather than functional machines sitting in a spare bedroom. A simulator is not the historical machine itself, but it can make important behavior and software available to study.

The site's computer sections are grouped alongside a macro assembler and programming widgets, while its project gallery includes a 68K single-board computer, a rack-mounted CD system, and woodworking pieces such as a router table and bookcase.

That makes Sky Visions more than an archive for one hobby. It documents a technically curious person's continuity across technologies: working with modern software to preserve old machinery, and working with bamboo, fabric, or wood when the project needs something physical.

Even the architecture tells that story. One person's navigation tree still holds everything together.

Explore the kite plans or return to the personal site index.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.