"itself would have rotated in the opposite direction to the rotor. While he designed a number of man powered flying machines with mechanical wings that flapped, he also designed a parachute and a light hang glider which could have flown. The viola organista was an experimental musical instrument invented by Leonardo da Vinci. It was the first bowed keyboard instrument (of which any record has survived) ever to be devised. Leonardo's original idea, as preserved in his notebooks of 1488–1489 and in the drawings in the Codex Atlanticus, was to use one or more wheels, continuously rotating, each of which"
"John W. Dickenson John Wallace Dickenson (born 22 January 1934) is an Australian inventor, who developed some liquid flow measuring devices and designed a successful hang glider configuration, for which he was awarded with the ""Gold Air Medal"", the highest award given by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world governing body for air sports, aeronautics and astronautics world records. In 1963, after seeing an image of a Rogallo wing airfoil on a magazine, Dickenson set to build a water skiing kite that could be released at altitude for a glide to a safe drop in the water, thus designed and"
"that were most successful and influential on the evolution of hang gliders. John Dickenson was a ski-kite pilot; he never foot-launched a hang glider. Most recognitions and awards have been given to Dickenson decades after his invention: John W. Dickenson John Wallace Dickenson (born 22 January 1934) is an Australian inventor, who developed some liquid flow measuring devices and designed a successful hang glider configuration, for which he was awarded with the ""Gold Air Medal"", the highest award given by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world governing body for air sports, aeronautics and astronautics world records. In 1963, after seeing"
"Lew Sanborn Lewis B. Sanborn (born: July 10, 1930 Cleveland, Ohio) is an early developer of the freefall method of skydiving who along with Jacques-André Istel helped popularize sport parachuting in the United States. He is considered by many to be a pioneer and legend in the sport. In 1959, Sanborn and Istel co-founded Parachutes Incorporated, the first commercial parachuting center in the United States. An accomplished pilot, member of the United States Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from 1948 to 1952, national skydiving champion in 1954 and 1959 and hall of fame skydiver (introductory class 2010) He continues to jump"
"developed the Dickenson format of water ski kite into a foot-launched hang glider. In 2012, John Dickenson was awarded the ""Gold Medal"" by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, for ""the invention of the modern hang glider"". There have been several rigid-wing hang gliders flown since Otto Lilienthal took his first flights in the 1890s. The first two high-performing modern hang gliders, however, were the ""Mitchell Wing"" and the ""Icarus"". In 1908, a gliding club in Breslau had the pilot hung behind a cable-stayed triangle control frame for weight-shift control. Hang gliders with similar control were also built by Percy Pilcher, Augustus"
"on a regular basis and is still very active in the skydiving community. Lew Sanborn Lewis B. Sanborn (born: July 10, 1930 Cleveland, Ohio) is an early developer of the freefall method of skydiving who along with Jacques-André Istel helped popularize sport parachuting in the United States. He is considered by many to be a pioneer and legend in the sport. In 1959, Sanborn and Istel co-founded Parachutes Incorporated, the first commercial parachuting center in the United States. An accomplished pilot, member of the United States Army’s 82nd Airborne Division from 1948 to 1952, national skydiving champion in 1954 and"
"and was instead a misreading of historical notes. 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"
"Percy Pilcher Percy Sinclair Pilcher (16 January 1866 – 2 October 1899) was a British inventor and pioneer aviator who was his country's foremost experimenter in unpowered flight at the end of the nineteenth century. He was planning a flight with a motor-driven hang glider, but died in the crash of another glider before he could make the attempt. His memorial is in a field opposite Stanford Hall. Percy Pilcher was born in Bath in 1866, and served in the Royal Navy for seven years from 1880. Thereafter he became an apprentice with the shipbuilders, Randolph, Elder and Company, of"
"parachute jump. These early wingsuits were made of materials such as canvas, wood, silk, steel, and whalebone. They were not very reliable, although some ""birdmen"", notably Clem Sohn and Leo Valentin, claimed to have glided for miles. In the mid-1990s, the modern wingsuit was developed by Patrick de Gayardon of France, adapted from the model used by John Carta. In 1997, the Bulgarian Sammy Popov designed and built a wingsuit which had a larger wing between the legs and longer wings on the arms. His prototype was developed at Boulder City, Nevada. Testing was conducted in a vertical wind tunnel"
"to his parachute container; his death is attributed to a rigging error he made while making the modification. Patrick de Gayardon Patrick de Gayardon (; 23 January 1960 in Oullins, Rhône – 13 April 1998 in Hawaii) was a French skydiver, skysurfer and a BASE jumper. De Gayardon was famous for pushing the boundaries of skydiving. He was one of the first people to develop the unique style of skysurfing, in which skydivers use a snowboard to make aerobatic maneuvers. He also made many famous stunts with his development of a ram-air wingsuit, starting modern-day wingsuiting. In 1998 Patrick fell"
"parachute jump. A more modest but highly useful invention, the folding umbrella, was introduced in 1710 by a Paris merchant named Jean Marius, with his shop at the barrier of Saint-Honoré. He obtained a monopoly on the manufacture of umbrellas which opened and closed like modern models, and weighed less than one kilogram. A model was purchased in 1712 by the Princess Palatine, who wrote about it to her friends and helped make it a popular fashion item. An important improvement was reported to the French Academy of Sciences in 1759; an umbrella combined with a cane, with a small"
"Percival H. Spencer Percival Hopkins Spencer (April 30, 1897 – January 16, 1995) was an American inventor, aviation pioneer, test pilot, and businessman. He was born on April 30, 1897 to Christopher Miner Spencer (1833-1922), the inventor of, among other things, the Spencer repeating rifle. The then 14-year-old Spencer built his first pontooned hang glider in April 1911 from plans he found in a ""Popular Mechanics"" magazine. On May 15, 1914, Spencer made his first powered flight in a Curtiss flying boat. In 1929, he broke the light airplane altitude record——piloting a Curtiss Robin monoplane. Spencer was the president of"
"Louis-Sébastien Lenormand Louis-Sébastien Lenormand (May 25, 1757 – April 4, 1837) was a French chemist, physicist, inventor, and a pioneer in parachuting. He is considered as the first man to make a witnessed descent with a parachute and is also credited with coining the term ""parachute"", from the Italian prefix ""para"" meaning ""against"", an imperative form of ""parare"" = to avoid, avert, defend, resist, guard, shield or shroud, from ""paro"" = to parry, and the French word ""chute"" for ""fall"", hence the word ""parachute"" literally means an aeronautic device ""against a fall"". After making a jump from a tree with"
"with Sanborn. He also founded Parachutes, Inc. with Sanborn, as first employee a company that designed parachutes and opened the first parachuting schools in America. In 1957 he and his company trained the United States Army in Free Fall parachuting, previously forbidden as too reckless by the Army. His students became the first members of the U.S.Army famed Golden Knights parachute team. He is thought to be the first sport parachutist in America to wear a helmet-mounted camera in an attempt to record images during freefall. Having opened the first professional Sport Parachuting Center in Orange, Massachusetts, he believed that"
"introduce his new ascending-gliding parachute as a training tool for parachutists. The technique allows parachutists to train more efficiently by towing the parachutist to a suitable altitude, then releasing them to practice landings. This training method proved cheaper than—and just as effective as—an airplane. In 1963 Jacques-André Istel from Pioneer Parachute Company bought a license from Lemoigne to manufacture and sell the 24-gore ascending-gliding parachute which was trade-named ""parasail."" In 1974, Mark McCulloh invented the first self-contained parasail launch and recovery vessel that incorporated a hydraulic winch and canopy assist mast that collectively launched and retrieved the parasail canopy and"
"History of hang gliding Hang gliding is an air sport employing a foot-launchable aircraft known as a hang glider. Typically, a modern hang glider is constructed of an aluminium alloy or composite-framed fabric wing. The pilot is ensconced in a harness suspended from the airframe, and exercises control by shifting body weight in opposition to a control frame. Early hang glider designs did not reliably achieve safe flight, their builders lacking a comprehensive understanding of the underlying principles of flight. The first recorded ""controlled"" flights were by German engineer Otto Lilienthal, whose research, published in 1889, strongly influenced later designers."
"by Spencer in 1983 at the age of 86. Its design did not meet expectations and the sole example was donated to the Experimental Aircraft Association Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Spencer died at a nursing home in Torrance, California in 1995, aged 97. Percival H. Spencer Percival Hopkins Spencer (April 30, 1897 – January 16, 1995) was an American inventor, aviation pioneer, test pilot, and businessman. He was born on April 30, 1897 to Christopher Miner Spencer (1833-1922), the inventor of, among other things, the Spencer repeating rifle. The then 14-year-old Spencer built his first pontooned hang glider in April"
"Franz Reichelt, who jumped from the Eiffel Tower to test his invention of a combination of parachute and wing, which was similar to modern wingsuits. He misled the guards by saying that the experiment was going to be conducted with a dummy. He hesitated quite a long time before he jumped, and was killed when he hit the ground head first, opening a measurable hole in the frozen ground. A wingsuit was first used in the US in 1930 by a 19-year-old American, Rex Finney of Los Angeles, California, as an attempt to increase horizontal movement and maneuverability during a"
"Charles Broadwick Charles Broadwick (born John Murray) was an American pioneering parachutist and inventor. Speaking about Broadwick, an executive director of the U.S. Parachute Association, Ed Scott, said ""just about all modern parachute systems"" use ideas Broadwick developed: ""an integrated, form-fitting harness and container system nestled on the back."" Broadwick also developed the static line for deploying a parachute where a line attached to an aircraft pulls the parachute from its pouch. Static lines are still used today, for instance by paratroopers and novice skydivers. U.S. Army Warrant Officer Jeremiah Jones commented, ""[Broadwick] is like the grandfather of paratroopers."" In"
"Society for Fish and Sponges to his brother, Louis Denayrouze, so that he could advance the commercial interests of the diving apparatus in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1874, August Denayrouze dissolved both societies and created a single ""Reunited Society for Mechanical Specialities,"" and his brother Louis became its director. Denayrouze died on 1 January 1883, aged 45, of illness. Auguste Denayrouze August Denayrouze (1837–1883) was one of the inventors of the diving suit, along with Benoît Rouquayrol. Denayrouze was born on October 1, 1837, at Montpeyroux, Aveyron, France, on the Aubrac plateau. In 1852, at the age of fifteen, he"
"Franz Reichelt Franz Reichelt (1879 – 4 February 1912), also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt, was an Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building"
"Hermann Lattemann Hermann Lattemann (September 14, 1852, Gebhardshagen near Braunschweig – June 17, 1894, Krefeld) was a German balloon pilot and inventor who experimented with an early prototype of a parachute. Together with his wife Käthe Paulus, Lattemann designed a parachute prototype in an attempt to make balloon flights safer. The main invention was to have parachutes folded and packed in bags. Lattemann died during a test. At age 42, his parachute failed to open, although his wife's parachute did open, when they both jumped out of a balloon named ""Fin de Siècle"", and she watched his fall in horror."
"Jean-Marc Boivin Jean-Marc Boivin (6 April 1951 – 17 February 1990) was a French mountaineer, extreme skier, hang glider and paraglider pilot, speleologist, BASE jumper, award-winning film maker, and author. The holder of several altitude records for hang gliding and paragliding, the creator of numerous first ascents and first ski descents in the Alps, a member of the team that broke the record for a sub-glacial dive and the first person to paraglide from the summit of Mount Everest, Boivin was a pioneer of extreme sports. He died from injuries incurred after BASE jumping off Angel Falls in Venezuela, the"
"obscurity. Rolland Magallon from France is sometimes thought to have invented the ultralight trike aircraft because it was Magallon who first marketed it from October 1979 through 1981. Palmer moved on to design a successful line of personal hovercraft. Barry Hill Palmer Barry Hill Palmer (born November 10, 1937) is an American aeronautical engineer (UC Berkeley, 1961), inventor, builder and pilot of the first hang glider based on the Rogallo wing or ""flexible wing"". Palmer also designed, built and flew the first weight-shift ultralight trike aircraft. On August 1961 Barry Palmer first saw a photo of the Rogallo wing mounted"
"German-born British engineer Augustus Siebe. In 1828 they decided to find another application for their device and converted it into a diving helmet. They marketed the helmet with a loosely attached ""diving suit"" so that a diver could perform salvage work but only in a full vertical position, otherwise water entered the suit. In 1829 the Deane brothers sailed from Whitstable for trials of their new underwater apparatus, establishing the diving industry in the town. In 1834 Charles used his diving helmet and suit in a successful attempt on the wreck of ""Royal George"" at Spithead, during which he recovered"
"with a parachute. On 26 December 1783, he jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in France, in front of a crowd that included Joseph Montgolfier, using a parachute with a rigid wooden frame. Between 1853 and 1854, Louis Charles Letur developed a parachute-glider comprising an umbrella-like parachute with smaller, triangular wings and vertical tail beneath. Letur died after it crashed in 1854. Kites are most notable in the recent history of aviation primarily for their man-carrying or man-lifting capabilities, although they have also been important in other areas such as meteorology. The Frenchman Gaston Biot developed a man-lifting"
"a window. Becker used a system of tubes for inhaling and exhaling, and demonstrated his suit in the River Thames, London, during which he remained submerged for an hour. German-born British engineer Augustus Siebe developed the standard diving dress in the 1830s. Expanding on improvements already made by another engineer, George Edwards, Siebe produced his own design - a helmet fitted to a full length watertight canvas diving suit. Later suits were made from waterproofed canvas invented by Charles Mackintosh. From the late 1800s and throughout most of the 20th century, most standard dress was made from a sheet of"
"a witness, maintains that Boivin hit the cliff, landed in the tree-tops, and that the helicopter team thought that his waving was a sign that he was not injured, rather than an attempt to summon help. Both accounts agree that when the team returned for him, he had died from internal injuries and blood loss. Jean-Marc Boivin Jean-Marc Boivin (6 April 1951 – 17 February 1990) was a French mountaineer, extreme skier, hang glider and paraglider pilot, speleologist, BASE jumper, award-winning film maker, and author. The holder of several altitude records for hang gliding and paragliding, the creator of numerous"
"in the 1970s and 1980s. Francis Rogallo died at home on September 1, 2009, in Southern Shores, North Carolina, near Kitty Hawk, the birthplace of aviation. Francis Rogallo Francis Melvin Rogallo (January 27, 1912 – September 1, 2009) was an American aeronautical engineer inventor born in Sanger, California, U.S.; he is credited with the invention of the Rogallo wing, or ""flexible wing"", a precursor to the modern hang glider and paraglider. His patents were ranged over mechanical utility patents and ornamental design patents for wing controls, airfoils, target kite, flexible wing, and advanced configurations for flexible wing vehicles. Francis Rogallo"
"James Floyd Smith James Floyd Smith (October 17, 1884 – April 18, 1956) was a test pilot and instructor for Glenn Martin, and was a manufacturer of parachutes. He built and flew his own plane in 1912, and invented the manually operated parachute for the Army in 1918. He was awarded the Aero Club of America Medal of Merit. He was born in Illinois on October 17, 1884, then his family moved to Union, Oregon. In 1907 he married Hilder Florentina Youngber of Galesburg, Illinois. Their first son, Sylvester Smith, was killed at age 11 by a car in 1919,"
"humans in extreme environments. Christian J. Lambertsen Christian James Lambertsen (May 15, 1917 – February 11, 2011) was an American environmental medicine and diving medicine specialist who was principally responsible for developing the United States Navy frogmen's rebreathers in the early 1940s for underwater warfare. Lambertsen designed a series of rebreathers in 1940 (patent filing date: 16 Dec 1940) and in 1944 (patent issue date: 2 May 1944) and first called his invention ""breathing apparatus"". Later, after the war, he called it ""Laru"" (portmanteau for Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit) and finally, in 1952, he changed his invention's name again to"
"Christian J. Lambertsen Christian James Lambertsen (May 15, 1917 – February 11, 2011) was an American environmental medicine and diving medicine specialist who was principally responsible for developing the United States Navy frogmen's rebreathers in the early 1940s for underwater warfare. Lambertsen designed a series of rebreathers in 1940 (patent filing date: 16 Dec 1940) and in 1944 (patent issue date: 2 May 1944) and first called his invention ""breathing apparatus"". Later, after the war, he called it ""Laru"" (portmanteau for Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit) and finally, in 1952, he changed his invention's name again to SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater"
"arms and legs when pressurised. This was remedied in CH-2 (1932–1935) and later suits, up to the 1940 CH-7. CH-3 was the first operational suit that allowed the pilot sufficient freedom of movement, first tested in flight in 1937 at 12 kilometer altitude. Chertovsky coined the term ""skafander"" for full pressure suits; from the Greek words ""skaf"" (""boat"", ""ship"") and ""andros"" (""man""); ""skafandr"" has since become the term used by Russians to refer to standard diving dresses or space suits. Yevgeny Chertovsky Yevgeny Yefimovich Chertovsky (; born February 15, 1902, date of death unknown) was a Soviet Russian inventor who"