You’ve seen the movies. A hero leaps from a burning plane, pulls a cord, and a billowing silk canopy saves them from a messy end. It feels modern. It feels like the pinnacle of 20th-century daredevilry. But if you’re asking when were parachutes invented, the answer isn't a single date on a calendar. It’s a messy, centuries-long saga of dreamers jumping off towers with umbrellas and Renaissance geniuses doodling in the margins of their notebooks.
People have wanted to fly forever. Or, more accurately, they've wanted to fall without dying.
The Ancient "Umbrella" Phase
Long before we had nylon or ripstop, people were basically trying to use oversized umbrellas to slow their descent. There are legends from China, dating back to the Han Dynasty, of people using "hats" or "parasols" to survive falls. Is it true? Maybe. It’s hard to verify a 2,000-year-old jump. But the physics check out—sorta. If you have enough surface area, you create drag.
Fast forward to the 1470s in Renaissance Italy. An anonymous manuscript shows a free-hanging man clutching a crossbar attached to a conical canopy. This is arguably the first technical drawing that looks like a real parachute. Shortly after, the heavy hitter arrived: Leonardo da Vinci.
In 1485, Leonardo sketched a pyramidal parachute. He wrote that if a man had a tent made of linen, with all the apertures closed, and it was 12 yards across and 12 yards deep, he could "throw himself down from any great height without suffering any injury." Leonardo was a genius, but he never actually built it. He just left the idea there for us to find later. Interestingly, in 2000, a British skydiver named Adrian Nicholas actually built Leo's design using period-accurate materials. It worked. It was heavy as lead and drifted dangerously, but it proved the 500-year-old math was solid.
The First Real Leaps
The 1700s changed everything. This is when the question of when were parachutes invented moves from "cool drawings" to "actually jumping off stuff."
Fausto Veranzio, a Croatian inventor, published a book called Machinae Novae in 1615. He described a "Homo Volans" (Flying Man). He reportedly jumped from a tower in Venice using a wooden frame draped in fabric. Historians argue about whether he actually did it or just thought about it really hard, but the design was a massive leap forward from Leonardo’s pyramid.
Then came the French. They were obsessed with balloons.
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In 1783, Louis-Sébastien Lenormand jumped from the observatory in Montpellier. He used a 14-foot parasol with a rigid wooden frame. He's actually the guy who coined the term "parachute"—from the Greek para (against) and the French chute (fall). Basically, "against the fall."
But the real MVP of this era was André-Jacques Garnerin. In 1797, he ditched the rigid frames. Rigid frames were heavy and dangerous. Garnerin realized he could use a silk canopy that looked like a giant umbrella without the ribs. He climbed into a basket attached to a hydrogen balloon, rose 3,000 feet over Paris, and then—in a move that would terrify anyone today—severed the rope connecting his basket to the balloon.
His parachute opened. It swung wildly because he hadn't thought to put a vent in the top to let air escape, making him violently airsick. But he landed safely. That was the first "soft" parachute jump in history.
The Transition to the Modern Era
For a hundred years, parachutes were a circus act. "Aeronauts" would go up in balloons and jump out for the amusement of crowds. It wasn't a safety device; it was a stunt.
Everything changed with the airplane.
When the Wright Brothers took off, suddenly we had a new problem. Balloons go up and down slowly. Planes go fast and crash hard. You couldn't exactly stand on top of a biplane with a giant open umbrella. You needed something packed away.
This brings us to two crucial figures: Štefan Banič and Gleb Kotelnikov.
Banič, a Slovak immigrant in the US, patented a "knapsack" style parachute in 1914. He actually jumped from a 15-story building in Washington D.C. to prove it to the patent office. Meanwhile, in Russia, Kotelnikov was horrified by the death of a pilot and developed the first "hard" knapsack parachute that could be carried on a pilot's back.
But wait. There’s more.
If we are talking about the "modern" parachute—the one you pull a ripcord on—we have to talk about Leslie Irvin and Floyd Smith. In 1919, at McCook Field in Ohio, Irvin performed the first premeditated free-fall jump using a "plug" parachute. Before this, most parachutes were attached to the aircraft by a "static line." You jumped, the plane pulled the chute open. Irvin’s jump proved that a human could fall through the air, stay conscious, and manually deploy a parachute.
What Most People Get Wrong
One of the biggest misconceptions about when were parachutes invented is the "da Vinci did it all" myth. While his sketch is iconic, he didn't understand the need for a vent. Without a hole at the top (the apex vent), the air spills out the sides, causing the parachute to tilt and oscillate like a leaf in the wind.
Also, people think parachutes were always made of silk. Silk was the gold standard because it was light and strong, but it was also expensive and hard to get during wars. During WWII, nylon was invented, and it revolutionized the industry. It was cheaper, didn't rot as easily, and handled the shock of opening at high speeds much better than natural fibers.
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The Physics of Not Dying
It’s all about terminal velocity. When you fall, gravity pulls you down at an accelerating rate. Eventually, air resistance (drag) pushes back hard enough that you stop accelerating. For a human, that's about 120 mph.
A parachute increases your surface area drastically. This increases drag, slowing your terminal velocity from "lethal" to "about the speed of jumping off a chair."
Today, we use "square" or ram-air parachutes. These aren't just drag devices; they are wings. Invented by Domina Jalbert in 1964, the parafoil allows jumpers to steer, fly cross-country, and land with pinpoint accuracy. This turned parachuting from a "survive the fall" emergency into a "fly like a bird" sport.
Actionable Insights for the Curious
If you're fascinated by the history of flight or want to experience it yourself, here is how to engage with this legacy:
- Visit the Smithsonian: The National Air and Space Museum in D.C. has some of the earliest examples of life-saving chutes.
- Check out the "Leonardo Jump": Look up the footage of Adrian Nicholas's 2000 jump. It’s a wild look at how 15th-century tech actually behaves in the sky.
- Try a Tandem: If you want to know how it feels to move from freefall to canopy flight, a tandem skydive is the only way to experience the difference between drag and lift firsthand.
- Study Material Science: If you're into the "how," look into the development of Kevlar and Spectra lines. Modern parachutes use lines thinner than a shoelace that can hold thousands of pounds of force.
The parachute wasn't "invented" in a single moment of "Eureka!" It was carved out of the air by centuries of people willing to risk a very long drop to prove an idea. From 15th-century linen tents to modern nylon wings, the goal has stayed the same: making the sky a place where we can stay for a while, rather than just pass through.