It is believed that the idea of the parachute was first submitted by Leonardo da Vinci, the drawings are preserved in his notebooks. But the first parachute was invented, created and tested by the Croat Faust Vrancic.
Creating a parachute
Back in 1483, the genius Leonardo da Vinci sketched in his notebooks a sketch of a pyramidal parachute and described the principle of its operation. However, the implementation of the idea was postponed for centuries. The first parachute jump was made by the Croat Faust Vrančić in 1597, but the invention did not take root for many years. Officially, Vrancic is considered the inventor of the first parachute.
There are ancient records testifying that a man made an attempt to master the air space long ago by Leonardo da Vinci. People tried to descend from the hills on devices that looked like umbrellas.
Half a century later, a French criminal named Laven took advantage of the idea - he made something like a tent from sheets and tied it with a whalebone, and then made a successful jump from the window of a prison cell. After some time, another criminal sentenced to death was offered to test the so-called "flying cloak of Professor Fontage". He jumped successfully, and he was given life. But the word "parachute" was introduced into human use by the French inventor Louis-Sebastian Lenormand, who jumped from the Montpellier tower in 1783. He did not reinvent the wheel and only slightly modernized the design proposed by Vranceaic. After that, people could not decide to jump for a long time and tested new models with the help of pets, sheep and cats. There were also several unsuccessful jumps that ended in the death of the testers.
Inventors of modern parachutes
At the beginning of the twentieth century, German woman Kat Pauls invented the first folding parachute. Pauls is considered a legendary figure and the first female skydiver. A few years later, the Russian military Greb Kotelnikov, upset by the death of the famous pilot Matsievich, invented a fundamentally new type of RK-1 parachute. This is no longer a grandfather, but the father of a modern parachute. His sail was made of silk, which was attached with slings to the shoulder grips. The parachute was for the first time compactly packed into a knapsack. Kotelnikov possessed remarkable commercial acumen and patented his invention as an aviation knapsack parachute.
Kotelnikov's grave has become a place of pilgrimage for parachutists. They tie ribbons for parachute tightening on tree branches near the grave, believing that this will keep them in the air.
The invention was adopted by the Soviet army. Parachuting developed in the USSR with unprecedented speed and strength. In 1926, Kotelnikov donated his invention to the Soviet government.
