help - what came first - the parachute or the airplane?

Question

if possible list a source. Remember the hot air balloon was invented before the airplane. thanks

Answer 1

LOL they wouldn't have needed a parachute before WWI I doubt so I'd say the plane. But just saw this link. It basically says parachute. Scroll down it a little.

Answer 2

The first known written account of a parachute concept is found in da Vinci's notebooks (c

l495). The sketch he drew consisted of a cloth material pulled tightly over a rigid pyramidal structure. Although da Vinci never made the device, he is given credit for the concept of lowering man to the earth safely using a maximum drag decelerator.


Fauste Veranzio Tower jump Fauste Veranzio constructed a device similar to da Vinci's drawing and jumped from a tower in Venice in 1617. Over a century would pass before further developments would be made by the famous balloonists, Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier. In 1783 they succeeded in lowering animals to the ground from rooftops or balloons. During the same year Sebastian Lenormand jumped from a tower using a 14-foot diameter parachute. The first emergency use of a parachute was made by Jean Pierre Blanchard in 1785 after the hotair balloon he was in exploded. Blanchard also worked on a foldable silk parachute, for until then all parachutes were constructed with a rigid frame.

It wasn’t until the turn of the nineteenth century that an English baronet from the gloomy moors of Yorkshire conceived a flying machine with fixed wings, a propulsion system, and movable control surfaces. This was the fundamental concept of the airplane. Sir George Cayley also built the first true airplane — a kite mounted on a stick with a movable tail. It was crude, but it proved his idea worked, and from that first humble glider evolved the amazing machines that have taken us to the edge of space at speeds faster than sound.

So, the parachute was invented before the airplane.

Answer 3

Parachute. Actually the first parachute was used before the hot ait balloon became usefull.

A few medieval documents record the use of parachute-like devices to allow a person to fall (somewhat) safely from a height. In 852, an Andalusian-Arab daredevil named Armen Firman jumped from a tower in Córdoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts to arrest his fall, sustaining only minor injuries. In the 9th century, another Muslim Abbas Ibn Firnas attempted a similar feat. According to Joseph Needham there were working parachutes in China as early as the 12th century.