Editing Parachute (section)

===18th and 19th centuries===
{{More citations needed section|date=January 2009}}
[[File:Early flight 02561u (3).jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Louis-Sébastien Lenormand]] jumps from the tower of the Montpellier observatory, 1783. Illustration from the late 19th century.]]
[[File:Early flight 02561u (4).jpg|thumb|upright| The first use of a frameless parachute, by [[André-Jacques Garnerin|André Garnerin]] in 1797]]
[[File: First parachute2.jpg|thumb|upright|Schematic depiction of Garnerin's parachute, from an early nineteenth-century illustration.]]
The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by [[Louis-Sébastien Lenormand]] in [[France]], who made the first recorded public jump in 1783. Lenormand also sketched his device beforehand.

Two years later, in 1785, Lenormand coined the word "parachute" by hybridizing an Italian prefix ''para'', an imperative form of ''parare'' = to avert, defend, resist, guard, shield or shroud, from ''paro'' = to parry, and ''chute'', the French word for ''fall'', to describe the aeronautical device's real function.

Also in 1785, [[Jean-Pierre Blanchard]] demonstrated it as a means of safely disembarking from a [[hot-air balloon]]. While Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations were conducted with a dog as the passenger, he later claimed to have had the opportunity to try it himself in 1793 when his hot air balloon ruptured, and he used a parachute to descend. (This event was not witnessed by others.)

On 12 October 1799, [[Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin]] ascended in a gondola attached to a balloon. At 900 meters she detached the gondola from the balloon and descended in the gondola by parachute. In doing so, she became the first woman to parachute.<ref>{{cite book |title=Folies, tivolis et attractions: les premiers parcs de loisirs parisiens |author=Gilles-Antoine Langlois |year=1991 |language=fr |publisher=Délégation à l'action artistique de la ville de Paris |page=144 |isbn=9782905118356 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qJ8kAQAAIAAJ}}</ref> She went on to complete many ascents and parachute descents in towns across France and Europe.<ref name="Duhem">{{cite book|first=Jules |last=Duhem|title=Histoire des idées aéronautiques avant Montgolfier|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X7SqV0wAYP0C&pg=PA263|accessdate=25 July 2012|year=1943|publisher=Nouvelles Editions Latines|page=263|language=French|editor-first=Fernand |editor-last=Sorlot}}</ref>

Subsequent development of the parachute focused on it becoming more compact. While the early parachutes were made of [[linen]] stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded [[silk]], taking advantage of silk's strength and light [[weight]]. In 1797, [[André-Jacques Garnerin|André Garnerin]] made the first descent of a "frameless" parachute covered in silk.<ref name="soden">{{cite book |last=Soden |first=Garrett |title=Defying Gravity: Land Divers, Roller Coasters, Gravity Bums, and the Human Obsession with Falling |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B4K0rfx_E_kC&pg=PA18 |year=2005 |publisher=[[W. W. Norton & Company]] |isbn=978-0-393-32656-7 |pages=21–22 |via=Google Books}}</ref> In 1804, [[Jérôme Lalande]] introduced a vent in the canopy to eliminate violent oscillations.<ref name="soden"/> In 1887, [[Park Van Tassel]] and [[Thomas Scott Baldwin]] invented a parachute in San Francisco, California, with Baldwin making the first successful parachute jump in the western United States.<ref name="fogel">{{cite book |last=Fogel |first=Gary B. |author-link=Gary B. Fogel |title=Sky Rider: Park Van Tassel and the Rise of Ballooning in the West |url=https://unmpress.com/books/sky-rider/9780826362827 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122010926/https://unmpress.com/books/sky-rider/9780826362827 |archive-date=22 November 2021 |year=2021 |publisher=[[University of New Mexico Press]] |isbn=978-0-8263-6282-7 |pages=38–43 |access-date=5 December 2022}}</ref>