Leonardo da Vinci sketched a pyramid-shaped parachute as an early parachute design.
In the Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo described a pyramid-shaped linen canopy supported by wooden poles. He estimated that a person could descend safely with a structure about 7.2 metres high and 7.2 metres wide at its base. The design has no modern harness or suspension-line arrangement, but its purpose was clearly controlled descent through the air.
Leonardo was studying flight during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. His parachute concept was part of a much larger body of work on air resistance, falling bodies, wings, and flying machines. He did not build and test the design, so it was not a proven working parachute in his lifetime.
A common mix-up is calling Leonardo the inventor of the modern parachute. The modern parachute developed much later, while Leonardo supplied one of the earliest detailed European designs for a parachute-like device.