Adolphe Pégoud - The First Parachute Jump – A Leap into History

Have you seen the film of the guy who made a parachute / jumping suit, and lept from the Eifel Tower.... He should have tested it with a sack of potatoes first.....

@Life_N_Times_of_Shane_T_Hanson: Yup…..He was a little heavy with balls and a little light in brains:)

@Heavyhand: I don't know about his development history, with the parachute, but a 1/4 scale weight and chute, could have been taken up in his plane and tossed out - I mean this is easy enough.... or someone else could have thrown it or released it from under the plane etc... and he could have observed it.....

http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol116jm.html ----------- The earliest reports of pilots jumping by parachute from aircraft mention a Captain Berry at St Louis in the USA in 1912, and a Frenchman, Adolphe Pegoud, in 1913. Pegoud was a factory test pilot when he was asked to test a parachute invented by a Monsieur Bonnet. This parachute was of the familiar silk canopy construction stowed in a canvas container attached to the outside of the Bleriot monoplane behind the cockpit, with the ripcord connected to the pilot. Pegoud took off and climbed to about 120 metres. He unclipped his safery belt and stood up, pulling the ripcord as he did so. The parachute snapped open, caught the air and yanked him out of the cockpit. He landed unharmed in a tree. Against expectations, the solitary aeroplane did not dive down and crash but, instead, tumbled through the air in a series of loops and turns and landed safely on the ground.(10) This was one of the few documented cases of unmanned aircraft returning to earth and landing perfectly after their engines had stopped. It certainly confirms the excellent flying characteristics of some of the early aircraft.(11)