By Mary Bellis
Leornardo DaVinci Parachute drawing

Credit for the invention of the first practical parachute frequently goes to Sebastien Lenormand who demonstrated the parachute principle in 1783. However, parachutes had been imagined and sketched by Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) centuries earlier and other inventors have designed parachutes, including fellow Italian Fauste Veranzio who constructed a device based on da Vinci's drawing and jumped from a Venice tower in 1617.

Jean Pierre Blanchard (1753-1809), a Frenchman was probaly the first person to actually use a parachute for an emergency. In 1785, he dropped a dog in a basket, to which a parachute was attached, from a balloon high in the air. In 1793, Blanchard claims to have escaped from an exploded hot air balloon with a parachute. Blanchard, it should be noted, also developed the first foldable parachute made from silk, up until that point all parachutes were made from rigid frames.

In 1797 (October 22), Andrew Garnerin was the first person recorded to jump with a parachute without a rigid frame. Garnerin jumped from hot air ballons as high as 8,000 feet in the air. Garnerin also designed the first air vent in a parachute intended to reduce oscillations.

In 1837, Robert Cocking became the first person to die from a parachute accident.

In 1887, Captain Thomas Baldwin invented the first parachute harness and in 1890, Paul Letteman and Kathchen Paulus invented the method of folding or packing the parachute in a knapsak to be worn on the back before its release. Kathchen Paulus was also behind the invention of the intentional breakaway, which is when one small parachute opens first and pulls open the main parachute.

Two parachuters claim to be the first man to jump from an airplane, both Grant Morton and Captain Albert Berry parachuted from an airplane in 1911. In 1914, Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick made the first freefall jump.

- Discusions

- Print version

1920 Parachute Design

1920 Parachute Design