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A parachute is a device used to slow the descent of a falling body or load. The word parachute comes from the French words para, protect or shield, and chute, to fall. Therefore parachute actually means to protect from a fall.
Parachutes were once made from silk but these days are almost always constructed from more durable woven nylon fabrics.
113px Faust Vrancic sketched one of the first parachutes in 1595.
A few medieval documents record the use of parachute-like devices to allow a person to fall (somewhat) safely from a height. In 852, an Andalusian daredevil named Armen Firman jumped from a tower in Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts to arrest his fall, sustaining only minor injuries. In 1178, another Muslim attempted a similar feat in Constantinople, but he broke several bones and later died of his injuries.
Leonardo da Vinci sketched a parachute while he was living in Milan around 1485. However, the idea of the parachute may not have originated with him: the historian Lynn White has discovered an anonymous Italian manuscript from about 1470 that depicts two designs for a parachute, one of which is very similar to da Vinci's. The first known test of such a parachute was made in 1617 in Venice by the Croatian inventor Faust Vrancic. A 1595 sketch of Vrancic's parachute is at left.The parachute was re-invented in 1783Events February 3 American Revolutionary War: Spain recognizes United States independence. February 4 American Revolutionary War: Great Britain formally declares that it will cease hostilities with the United States of America. May 18 Saint John, New Brun by Sebastien Lenormand in FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents.. Lenormand also coined the name parachute. Two years later, Jean Pierre Blanchard demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a hot air balloonHot air balloons are the oldest successful human flight technology, dating back to the Montgolfier brothers' invention in Annonay, France in 1783. The first manned flight was made on November 21, 1783, in Paris by Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlan. While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dogThis article discusses the domestic dog. For other members of the dog family, see Canidae. The dog is a canine omnivorous mammal that has been domesticated for somewhere between 14,000 and 150,000 years. In those millennia, the dog has developed into hund as the passenger, he later had the opportunity to try it himself when in 1793Events January 2 Russia and Prussia partition Poland January 9 Jean-Pierre Blanchard becomes the first to fly in a balloon in the United States. January 21 After being found guilty of treason by the French Convention, "Citizen Capet" ie. Louis XVI of Fran his hot air balloon ruptured and he used a parachute to escape.
Subsequent development of the parachute focused on it becoming more compact. While the early parachutes were made of linencloth, recovered from the Dead Sea Linen is a material made from the fibers of the flax plant. Linen Fiber When these fibers are twisted together (spun), it is called yarn. It is strong, durable, and resists rotting in damp climates. It is one of the few stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded silkSilk (SERICVS / Gr. sigma;ηρικoς ("silken") SERES / Gr. Sigma;ηρες ("Chinese") or alternatively < Ch. or ( pronounced "si") meaning "silk", the pictogram representing two strands of silk. is a natural fiber, taking advantage of silk's strength and light weight. In 1797, Andrew Garnerin made the first jump using such a parachute. Garnerin also invented the vented parachute, which improved the stability of the fall. In 1890, Paul Letteman and Kathchen Paulus made the first knapsack parachute.
On March 1, 1912, US Army Captain Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from a moving airplane over Missouri. Štefan Banic from Slovakia registered the first modern parachute patent in 1913.