Wednesday, March 18, 2015

WHO INVENTED THE PARACHUTE

Imagine if you find yourself into an empty space at the height of 4-5 miles above the Earth, and yet you have landed on the ground as if you jumped from fence 3 meters high.
This we can do with a parachute!

The parachute is just a big umbrella, that with its shape and surface, due to air resistance, slows the decline and fall of man through the air, slowly and slowly enough, that he does not hurt himself when he hits the ground.
The parachute is probably the oldest invention of slowing the fall.
Leonardo Da Vinci made a sketch of a parachute in his notebook in 1514.
Faust Vrančić published in 1595 a description of a usable parachute.
It is believed that the first man who used a parachute was the Frenchman Blanchard. In 1785 from a flying air balloon he parachuted a dog in a basket.
Jean-Pierre Blanchard claimed that he also parachuted from a balloon in 1793 and that during the descent to Earth, he broke his leg.

Another Frenchman, André-Jacques Garnerin, became famous as the first man who regularly paratrooped. For first time he publicly performed in Paris on October 22nd, 1793, and this is when he successfully jumped from a height greater than 600 meters.His parachute had a shape of umbrellas and was made of white cloth which was used for making sails, with diameter of 7 meters. At the center of the dome was a wooden reel of about 25 centimeters, with a hole in the middle, which allowed the air to come out from the dome.
The first successful parachute jump from an airplane in flight was performed in 1912 by the Captain Berry in Saint Louis, Missouri. 
During 1913 and 1914 there were many discussions if whether to use the parachutes to rescue the pilots from the plane. At the moment when the First World War started, this question has not yet been clarified. There was a problem in determining the size of the parachute, and in addition there was a fear that the pilot will not be able to jump out of a plane, without entangling the parachute.
In 1919 the U.S. military has embraced the seat type parachute as part of compulsory aviation equipment.

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