Leonardo da Vinci sketched a pyramid-shaped parachute designed to slow a person's fall.
The drawing appears in the Codex Atlanticus, a large collection of Leonardo's notes and sketches. His design used a rigid wooden frame covered with linen, creating a canopy roughly seven metres wide and seven metres high. Leonardo wrote that a person could jump from a great height without injury if the canopy were properly made.
The sketch was not a practical parachute in the modern sense because it lacked a tested harness and depended on a heavy frame. Nevertheless, its basic principle is recognizable: air resistance beneath a broad canopy reduces the speed of descent. In 2000, British adventurer Adrian Nichols built and tested a full-size replica, although he used a modern parachute for safety after the replica became unstable near the ground.
Leonardo's parachute was a design study, not evidence that he successfully made a working version. The famous pyramid shape also distinguishes it from later round and ram-air parachutes.