Parachute (concept)
Paracaídas (diseño conceptual)
- Date
- c. 1485 (Leonardo) / 1617 (Veranzio) / 1783 (Lenormand) · confidence high
- Place
- Milan, Italy (Leonardo) / Venice (Veranzio)
- Credited to
- Anonymous Italian (c. 1470), Leonardo da Vinci (Codex Atlanticus, c. 1485), Fausto Veranzio (Homo Volans, 1616)
- People
- 👤 Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A pyramidal linen canopy on a wooden frame, which Leonardo described as allowing a descent 'without any injury'; Veranzio published a square, tensioned parachute. The earliest conceptions of a device for descending through the air.
An anonymous drawing predates Leonardo (c. 1470, Siena manuscript). Whether Veranzio actually jumped from a bell tower in Venice is much disputed; Leonardo's design was successfully tested in 2000.
What it led to
- The Renaissance imagination of human flight
- The practical parachute of Lenormand and Garnerin (1783–1797), alongside ballooning
- Aeronautical engineering as a field of thought
Built on
- Kitec. 400 BCE
- Hot-air and hydrogen balloon1783
- Tents and awnings
- Studies of bird flight
Made possible
- Garnerin's parachute (1797)
- Ornithopter and Leonardo's flight studies