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None other than the celebrated Italian genius of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), painter, architect, sculptor and scientist. In 1483, he devised a “fall protector”, made of cloth and shaped like a pyramid, which served to study the principles of aerodynamics: by increasing air resistance, the object slowed down the fall of a body in the air. atmosphere. Even so, the modern parachute only appeared much later, at the end of the 18th century. The first person to demonstrate its use was the Frenchman Louis-Sébastien Lenormand (1757-1839), who, in 1783, jumped from a tree with two parasols, one in each hand. Another Frenchman, André-Jacques Garnerin (1796-1823) was the first man to jump with a parachute – which, with its canvas measuring 7 meters in diameter, looked like an enormous umbrella. In 1797, he tied this structure to a balloon and jumped from a height of 1000 meters in Parc Monceau, in Paris.
Designed to save people trapped in buildings, the parachute ended up being used more by the military, especially in World War II. It was the Germans who took full advantage of the invention, using it to land special troops, facilitate the supply of food in inaccessible places and infiltrate agents into enemy territory.