Leonardo da Vinci sketched a parachute in 1485 as an escape device for descending safely from a height.
His drawing shows a pyramid-shaped canopy supported by a wooden frame. Leonardo proposed that a person could use the structure to descend slowly through the air, an idea recorded in the Codex Atlanticus. The design was based on the principle that a broad surface moving through air creates drag and reduces falling speed.
Leonardo did not build and test the parachute, so the sketch was a theoretical design rather than a demonstrated invention. Modern parachutes usually use flexible fabric canopies, suspension lines, and harnesses, making them very different from Leonardo’s rigid pyramid. In 2000, the British skydiver Adrian Nicholas tested a full-scale version of Leonardo’s design and reported that it descended successfully, although he used a modern parachute for the final landing.