Like the men hanging from canvas wings and pushing off from soft promontories, Delsarteans knew enough to follow the natural momentum of their initial impulse; like the glider pilots, too, their performances were customarily short and self-consciously dramatic. But when Wilbur Wright in 1904 banked slowly over an Ohio field in his spindly biplane and – for the first time – returned full circle to his point of departure, he was the skyborn herald of a new kinaestehtic. Holding a wing-warping lever linked to a movable rudder in one organic system of control, Wilbur’s command came from the peculiarly sensitive center of the structure, whose lateral balance was decided by a helical twist across its cambered wings.
Hillel Schwartz, Torque: The New Kinaestehtic of the Twentieth Century. Published in Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter’s beautiful book ‘Incorporations’ on p. 70, now sadly out of print. (via yourharbour)