NPPF: Parachuting

[David Morris]

http://www.parachutehistory.com/eng/drs.html

Excerpt from Sandia Report SAND85-1180
"An Introduction to Deployable Recovery Systems"
by Jan Meyer
August 1985

 The first known written account of a parachute concept is found in da Vinci's
notebooks (cl495). The sketch he drew consisted of a cloth material pulled
tightly over a rigid pyramidal structure. Although da Vinci never made the
device, he is given credit for the concept of lowering man to the earth safely
using a maximum drag decelerator. 

Fauste Veranzio constructed a device similar to da Vinci's drawing and jumped
from a tower in Venice in 1617. Over a century would pass before further
developments would be made by the famous balloonists, Joseph and Jacques
Montgolfier. In 1783 they succeeded in lowering animals to the ground from
rooftops or balloons. During the same year Sebastian Lenormand jumped from a
tower using a 14-foot diameter parachute. The first emergency use of a
parachute was made by Jean Pierre Blanchard in 1785 after the hotair balloon he
was in exploded. Blanchard also worked on a foldable silk parachute, for until
then all parachutes were constructed with a rigid frame. 

In 1797, Andrew Garnerin made the first jump with a parachute without a rigid
frame. One of Garnerin's balloon jumps from 8000 feet, a very high altitude for
the time, was observed by a French astronomer, Lalandes. As the parachute
descended, severe oscillations were induced in the canopy. Lalandes suggested
cutting a small hole near the apex of the canopy to inhibit the oscillations.
This modification is now known as the vent and does indeed dramatically reduce
canopy oscillations. 

During the next century, parachute use was confined to carnivals and daredevil
acts. Acrobats would perform stunts on a trapeze bar suspended from a
descending parachute. The parachute was released from a hot-air balloon by
attaching the top of the parachute to the equator of the balloon with a cord
that broke after a person jumped from the basket. Public opinion became very
unfavorable towards the use of parachutes when Robert Cocking fell to his death
in 1837. Cocking jumped an inverted coneshaped parachute (point down) from 5000
ft. and distinguished himself by becoming parachuting's first fatality. 

The next major contribution to parachute systems was the development of a
harness by Captain Thomas Baldwin in 1887. The concept of folding or packing
the parachute in a knapsak-like container was developed by Paul Letteman and
Kathchen Paulus in 1890. Kathchen Paulus also demonstrated an intentional
breakaway. After a first parachute inflated, it was released and pulled open a
second parachute. 

The first jump from an airplane has been claimed by both Grant Morton and
Captain Albert Berry in 1911 or 1912. Morton jumped with a silk parachute
folded in his arms which he threw out as he left the plane. Captain Berry had a
36 ft. parachute packed into a metal case beneath the fuselage. The parachute
had a trapeze bar for him to hold on to as he jumped and descended to the
ground. Also in 1911, an Italian, Pino, invented the pilot chute or drogue
chute.' He attached a small parachute with a rigid frame to his helmet. The
pilot chute would easily inflate, pull the helmet off and then pull the
parachute out into the airstream. 

The first freefall jump was made by Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick in 1914, but the
military still did not believe that the human body could tolerate the
experience of freefall for more than a few seconds before "blacking out." The
skeptics were convinced in 1919 by Leslie Irvin and Floyd Smith. They
demonstrated freefall jumps and developed the ripcord at the parachute testing
and training center at Wright Field, established in 1918. 



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