Leonardo da Vinci designed a pyramid-shaped parachute for a controlled descent through the air.
His parachute appears in a 1485 notebook drawing. It consists of a rigid pyramid-like wooden frame covered with linen cloth, measuring about 7.2 metres on each side and about 7.2 metres high. Leonardo reasoned that the structure would create enough air resistance to slow a falling person.
The design was theoretical rather than a documented flight-tested device. In 2000, British skydiver Adrian Nichols built a version based on Leonardo’s sketch and successfully tested it, although he used modern safety equipment and detached from it at altitude because the wooden frame could become unstable.
Leonardo’s proposal is often called the first known parachute design. It was not the same as a modern soft-canopy parachute, and Leonardo did not claim to have invented skydiving. His work is important because it applied geometric structure and air resistance to a practical survival problem centuries before parachutes became operational.