Leonardo da Vinci sketched a pyramid-shaped parachute as a safety device for descending from the air.
He recorded the design around 1485 in the Codex Atlanticus. Its canopy was described as a linen pyramid supported by wooden poles, with dimensions intended to provide enough surface area to slow a person's fall. Leonardo did not build or test the device, so it was a theoretical design rather than a demonstrated invention.
The parachute idea belongs to Leonardo's wider study of flight, which also included wings, gliders, and aerial screws. His design is often praised because it uses the same basic principle as a modern parachute: increasing drag by presenting a large surface to the air.
People sometimes call it the first parachute, but earlier artistic and textual ideas about controlled descent existed. The important distinction is that Leonardo supplied a relatively detailed engineering drawing and a proposed structure centuries before practical parachutes became common.