A parachute is a device designed to slow an object's descent through the air by creating drag, used for personal descent, cargo drops and recovering spacecraft. The earliest recorded jump using a device to slow a fall was made in Cordoba, Spain in 852 AD by Armen Firman, using a large cloak. Leonardo da Vinci and Francesco di Giorgio Martini later sketched parachute designs during the Renaissance, but the first public jump with a functional parachute was made in 1783 by the Frenchman Louis-Sebastien Lenormand, who coined the word parachute in 1785 by combining the Italian para, to defend against, with the French chute, fall.
Facts
YearSourced to the subject's own account SignificanceSourced to the subject's own accountAndre Garnerin advanced the parachute in 1797 with the first descent made using a frameless design covered in silk, lighter and more compact than the wood-framed designs that came before it. 1 Connections
In Field
Source Parachute (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Parachute (Wikipedia)
Wikipedialead section, sentence 4
French Louis-Sebastien Lenormand made the first public jump in 1783, and he coined the term "parachute" in 1785.
History section, Garnerin 1797 sentence
In 1797, Andre Garnerin made the first descent of a frameless parachute covered in silk.
In Field: Aerospace Engineering, Lead section
It is primarily used to safely support people exiting aircraft at height, but also serves various purposes like slowing cargo, aiding in space capsule recovery on Earth, landing spacecraft on other planets, and stabilizing vehicles or objects.
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