Did you know that the earliest parachute was inspired by a painting?

Almost all of us have watched action films where someone jumps off a plane and lands on the ground with the help of a parachute. Thrilling, isn’t it? That reminds us, have you ever wondered who is responsible for creating the device that resists the fall of a person or an object from the air? Well, you must thank not one but many people for that. Here’s a look at the backstory of parachutes. 

Born out of Vinci’s sketch 
The oldest record of a parachute-like object can be traced back to the medieval age when a Moorish man in Spain named Armen Firman tried to jump off a tower wearing an abnormally large cloak. He believed that there was enough air in the folds of his cloak to prevent injury when he crashed on the ground. But as fate would have it, he didn’t survive the fall.  

Now, fast forward to Italy of early Renaissance and several designs of parachutes were emerging in anonymous manuscripts. One of the most popular sketches showed a free hanging man holding on to a crossbar frame and attached to a conical canopy, while four straps ran from the ends of the frame to his waist (almost like a seat belt). Needless to say, it was meant as a safety measure.  

However, within a few years, the design was more sophisticated by none other than famous Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci in his painting Codex Atlanticus (1485). Here, unlike the ancient parachutes, the scale of the parachute is proportionate to the weight of the jumper and showed a square wooden frame which changed the shape of the parachute from conical to pyramid when exposed to high altitude air. Experts posit that Vinci was influenced by engineers of his time. Long story short, Vinci’s design did have a practical side to it that was proved by Croatian inventor Faust Vrancic in 1617 when he jumped off a Venice tower. He called the parachute ‘Homo Volans’ (Flying Man) and wrote all about it and his experience of flying in it in his book Machinae Novae.  

Coining of the name ‘parachute’ 
The launch of the modern parachute is often credited to the Frenchman Louis Sebastien Lenormand who sketched the device, demonstrated the parachute principle, and also made the first ever recorded successful public jump in 1783. In fact, it was Lenormand himself, who, a couple of years later, coined the term ‘parchute’ from a combination of Italian and words: para meaning “to resist” and chute meaning “fall” respectively.  

Parachute for emergency landing 
In 1785, another Frenchman named Jean Pierre Blanchard used the aeronautical device for the first ever emergency landing. He put a dog in a basket and attached a parachute to it, using a hot air balloon. It was also Blanchard who developed the first ever foldable parachute made of silk, in contrast to the usual rigid frames. This prototype was later tried out by Andrew Garnerin who became the first human to jump in a frameless and soft parachute (looked like a giant umbrella with a diameter of 30 feet, equipped with hydrogen balloon), like the ones we use today. He made his descent from as high as 8000 feet and later designed the first air vent to reduce oscillations in parachute. 

Parachutes evolved a lot thereafter when US Army Major Captain Thomas Baldwin developed the first parachute harness in 1887, while Europeans Paul Letterman and Kathchen Paulus invented the knapsack parachute. Its technique was simple – when a person made a fall, he would be supported by a mini parachute while the actual parachute will be folded and packed in a backpack that will only deploy when activated mid-air.  

First freefall from a parachute 
Two parachuters, namely, Grant Morton and captain Albert Berry jumped off an airplane holding a parachute in their arms, and becoming the first ever humans to do so, in 1911. Three years later, Georgia Broadwick became the first woman and the first parachuter to deploy her chute manually and becoming the first to jump freefall. All these incidents took place in California.  

Interestingly, parachute jumping is now an adventure sport that originated in the 1960s and has remained popular ever since.