So Now You Know

Parachutes were imagined and sketched by Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) Other inventors designed parachutes, including Croatian Faust Vrancic who constructed a device based on Da Vinci's drawing and jumped from a Venice tower in 1617. Faust Vrancic published Machinae Novae, in which he describes in text and picture fifty-six advanced technical constructions, including Vrancic's parachute called the Homo Volans.

Jean Pierre Blanchard (1753-1809) a Frenchman was probably the first person actually to 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. In 1797, Andrew Garnerin was the first person recorded to jump with a parachute without a rigid frame. Garnerin jumped from hot air balloons as high as 8,000 feet. Garnerin also designed the first air vent in a parachute intended to reduce oscillations.

In 1890, Paul Letteman and Kathchen Paulus invented the method of folding or packing the parachute in a knapsack 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 free fall jump.