Fascinating Invention No. 15 - The Parachute

Fascinating Invention No. 13 - The Parachute

The first parachute was drawn by Leonardo da Vinci in about 1500 but he never got round to making one. That was left to Faust Vrancic, who in 1617 actually jumped from a Venice tower holding onto a parachute. At least he did not use a dog for his experiment as this is what Jean Pierre Blanchard did in 1785.

He took his dog up in the air for a balloon ride, probably jollying him along with lots of talk about the view and whatever and then…’LOOK FIFI – A CAT! FETCH!’ and he chucks him over the side attached to a not very good parachute. Maybe the dog did not die because Blanchard did use a parachute again to escape from his balloon when it suddenly exploded (I think Fifi was getting her own back).

Anyway parachutes got better because of dogs and mad Frenchmen and soon it stopped looking like a rigid pyramid and became a silky umbrella. Lots of people starting jumping from towers and then aeroplanes, just for fun. The big problem was the wobbling canopy.

Lots of people tried to stop the wobble, including Sir George Cayley, who thought that a cone-shaped parachute would do the trick; until Robert Cocking became the first person to die in a cone-shaped parachute accident in 1837.

Of course, it was someone in the army, Captain Thomas Baldwin in 1887, who said they should cut a hole in the top to stop the wobble and this worked. Parachutes became VERY BIG in the wars and now you get loads of different types and loads of different types of people use them – but not dogs.

wheeeeee

Dame Honoria Glossop has Given me Some Homework

Dame Honoria Glossop has given me some homework and since I do not want to do my actual spellings homework, I am doing this.

How many books do I have?
The Parents have at least 4 million books and most of those are stacked up on the stairs leaving only a tiny weeny gap to walk through. And, Mum goes mad if you dislodge her piles.
I actually have nearly 50 books and they are all on actual book shelves.


What was the last book you bought?
My quite nasty cousins, Skye and Jaspar, bought me a very bad baby-child book of inventions for my birthday (just gone). They did it on purpose and I even had to say thankyou which was evil. My proper present came fromGrandpa Jack and is about proper inventions made in the Victorian times.

Last book I read
I was force-read, 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' by The Parents but maybe that does not count. Neither does, 'Maths - Excercises for Book 4' or 'Look Around! Geography Goes Wild' or 'What the Romans Really Did for Us' because these are all school books. The last book I actually chose to read was, 'Biggles Learns to Fly' and this was utterly fantastic.



Special Books

The Parents read 'Mog' to me when I was a deadly annoying baby-child. I had to listen to Mog again and again and again until The Parents got so fed up they bought me an actual cat. We still have her and her name is, Serena which is a bit different to Mog.

'Moonfleet' has it all; smuggling, adventure, evil ghosts and action. I really liked it but Dad did not because he had to do at least 5 different funny voices in an old-fashioned english language.
It took a record six weeks for him to read. Actually I know Dad really likes it because he told me Grandpa Jack read it to him when he was a boy. So there we are.

Buzz Aldrin is very special for too many reasons to actually mention but here are a few. I will also go into space when I am a bit older.

I now have to let some other people have a go. So, Nicky and Horton and Alan might want to try.