Leonardo da Vinci sketched a parachute as a pyramid-shaped canopy.
Around 1485, Leonardo drew a design for a cloth-covered, rigid pyramid about seven metres high and wide. He proposed that a person could jump from a height while suspended beneath it. The sketch appears in the Codex Atlanticus and is one of his many studies of controlled flight.
Leonardo’s design was not a modern parachute: it had no flexible fabric canopy, suspension lines, or demonstrated test flight. Its significance is that it identified the essential principle of increasing air resistance to slow a fall. Modern parachutes use lighter, flexible canopies and are packed for deployment.
A common mix-up is calling Leonardo the inventor of the practical parachute. The first recorded jump with a parachute-like device is generally associated with André-Jacques Garnerin in 1797, more than three centuries later.