Great men throughout history have in the face of risk to their own comfort,

reputations or even their own lives, sought the noble task of inventing technologies

for the sake of their neighbors. Every aspect of our lives has been touched by our brave fathers that created things that didn't exist before them.

Architecture, transportation, medicine, apparel, farming, logistics, and economics, all are influenced

either for good or ill by those brave inventors that came before us.

However, there are a few inventions that came with extraordinary risk.

One such invention was the parachute.

There is some debate as to who was the first to conceptualize the parachute.

Some say it was the ancient Chinese.

Some say it was an Italian inventor in the 15th century.

And some credit, Leonardo da Vinci, with the inventing of the parachute. He had drawn a picture of a cloth pyramid of wooden poles with the accompanying note.

If a man is provided with a length of gum-lined cloth with a length of 12 yards on each side and 12 yards high, he can jump

from any great height whatsoever without injury. Whoever first conceptualize a parachute, the first man to test it was a man named Andre Jacques Garnerin.

Garnerin, a Paris native, grew in fame as a balloonist in the newly invented hot air balloon. Having experimented with the idea of a

parachute, Garnerin had used animals initially to test a prototype, but no human had dared risk a fall with a parachute.

Spectators that had arrived to view the event of Garnerin's first attempt of a drop with a parachute

notice a gigantic umbrella folded on the ground next year. a the basket, the balloon rose quickly to 3,000 feet, where he recounted the following.

I was on the point of cutting the cord that suspended me between heaven and earth and measured

with my eye the vast space that separated me from the rest of the human race.

I felt myself precipitated with the velocity which was checked by a sudden unfolding of my parachute.

At length, I perceived thousands of people.

Some on horseback, others on foot following me,

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