Parachute

A parachute is a device designed to slow an object's descent through an atmosphere by creating drag or aerodynamic lift. It is primarily used to safely support people exiting aircraft at height, but also serves various purposes like slowing cargo, aiding in space capsule recovery on Earth, landing spacecraft on other planets, and stabilizing vehicles or objects. Modern parachutes are typically made from durable fabrics like nylon and come in various shapes, such as dome-shaped, rectangular, and inverted domes, depending on their specific function.

The concept of the parachute dates back to ancient attempts at flight. In AD 852, Armen Firman, in Córdoba, Spain, made the first recorded jump with a large cloak to slow his fall. Renaissance figures like Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Leonardo da Vinci later sketched designs resembling modern parachutes, but it was not until the 18th century that the first successful jumps occurred. French Louis-Sébastien Lenormand made the first public jump in 1783, and he coined the term "parachute" in 1785. In the following years, key advancements were made by figures like André Garnerin, with parachutes becoming lighter, more reliable, and easier to deploy.

By the time of World War I, parachutes had become essential for aviators, and significant improvements were made to their designs, including the introduction of the backpack-style parachute by Charles Broadwick and Gleb Kotelnikov's knapsack parachute. After World War II, parachuting became a popular sport, and new materials like nylon replaced silk. Today, parachutes are used in military, recreational, and emergency situations, continuing to evolve with advances in technology and design.

In 852, in Córdoba, Spain, the Andalusian Armen Firman attempted unsuccessfully to fly by jumping from a tower while wearing a large cloak. It was recorded that "there was enough air in the folds of his cloak to prevent great injury when he reached the ground."

The earliest evidence for the true parachute dates back to the Renaissance period. The oldest parachute design appears in a manuscript from the 1470s attributed to Francesco di Giorgio Martini (British Library, Add MS 34113, fol. 200v), showing a free-hanging man clutching a crossbar frame attached to a conical canopy. As a safety measure, four straps ran from the ends of the rods to a waist belt. Although the surface area of the parachute design appears to be too small to offer effective air resistance and the wooden base-frame is superfluous and potentially harmful, the basic concept of a working parachute is apparent.

The design is a marked improvement over another folio (189v), which depicts a man trying to break the force of his fall using two long cloth streamers fastened to two bars, which he grips with his hands.

Shortly after, a more sophisticated parachute was sketched by the polymath Leonardo da Vinci in his Codex Atlanticus (fol. 381v) dated to c. 1485. Here, the scale of the parachute is in a more favorable proportion to the weight of the jumper. A square wooden frame, which alters the shape of the parachute from conical to pyramidal, held open Leonardo's canopy. It is not known whether the Italian inventor was influenced by the earlier design, but he may have learned about the idea through the intensive oral communication among artist-engineers of the time. The feasibility of Leonardo's pyramidal design was successfully tested in 2000 by Briton Adrian Nicholas and again in 2008 by the Swiss skydiver Olivier Vietti-Teppa. According to historian of technology Lynn White, these conical and pyramidal designs, much more elaborate than early artistic jumps with rigid parasols in Asia, mark the origin of "the parachute as we know it."

The Croatian polymath and inventor Fausto Veranzio, or Faust Vrančić (1551–1617), examined da Vinci's parachute sketch and kept the square frame but replaced the canopy with a bulging sail-like piece of cloth that he came to realize decelerates a fall more effectively. A now-famous depiction of a parachute that he dubbed Homo Volans (Flying Man), showing a man parachuting from a tower, presumably St Mark's Campanile in Venice, appeared in his book on mechanics, Machinae Novae ("New Machines", published in 1615 or 1616), alongside a number of other devices and technical concepts.