Passage V

Take to the Sky

In 1797, Andre-jacques Garnerin caused a stir in Paris when, at an elevation of 3, 200 feet, he detached the basket he was riding in from its hot air balloon. Suspended under a twenty-three-foot-wide canopy of silk, people were shocked as Garnerin and his basket floated to the ground. His stunt is widely regarded as the first trial parachute jump. About three hundred years before Garnerin designed his parachute however, Italian artist, Leonardo da Vinci, had sketched a similar contraption in the margins of a notebook centuries before.

Leonardo wrote prolifically in his notebooks about an enormous range of ideas. Unlike the nylon parachutes of today, these bend as they catch the air, Leonardo's design, if constructed, would be rigid and unwieldy: its frame consisted of twenty-two-foot-long wooden poles shaped into a pyramid. It was unclear whether the linen panels anchored to the frame would catch enough air to ensure a jumper's safe landing. Leonardo himself never actually built his parachute.(67)

[1] In 2000, British skydiver Adrian Nicholas decided to test Leonardo's design. [2] The finished parachute weighed 187 pounds; about 172 pounds heavier than a modern parachute. [3] He constructed the parachute according to Leonardo's plans, using only materials that would have been available in fifteenth-century Milan. [4] Because of it's weight, Nicholas had to cut himself free near the end of the jump and deploy his backup parachute. [5] Still, he had proved that Leonardo's pyramidal design could slow a parachutist's descent.(72)

Eight years later, Swiss parachutist Olivier Vietti-teppa modernized Leonardo's original concept. His parachute was constructed with nylon and without the heavy wooden frame. Despite his inability to steer the parachute, Vietti-teppa managed to complete what he called a perfect jump.(73) The pyramidal shape of the parachute allowed him to glide gracefully——and safely to the ground. Before long, Leonardo's historic sketch had become a modern reality.