page_title: Parachuting
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Parachuting / History
caption_attribution_description: Polski: J. Dzikowski spada. Skok ze spadochronem
context_page_description: Parachuting is a method of transiting from a high point to Earth with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or parachutes. It may involve more or less free-falling which is a period when the parachute has not yet been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal velocity.
context_section_description: The first parachute jump in history was made by André-Jacques Garnerin, the inventor of the parachute, on 22 October 1797. Garnerin tested his contraption by leaping from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet (980 m) above Paris. Garnerin's parachute bore little resemblance to today's parachutes, however, as it was not packed into any sort of container and did not feature a ripcord. The first intentional free-fall jump with a ripcord-operated deployment was not made until over a century later by Leslie Irvin in 1919. While Georgia Broadwick made an earlier free-fall in 1914 when her static line became entangled with her jump aircraft's tail assembly, her free-fall descent was not planned. Broadwick cut her static line and deployed her parachute manually, only as a means of freeing herself from the aircraft to which she had become entangled.
  The military developed parachuting as a way to save aircrew from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, and later, as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1952.
  In World War II, thousands of combatants across the globe experienced exiting an aircraft and parachuting to the ground, either as a paratrooper dropped into combat or as flight crew escaping a crippled aircraft. Some servicemen discovered that it was enjoyable, and after the war ended kept jumping. The National Parachute Jumpers and Riggers was born in 1947. This group would later become the Parachute Club of America, and finally its current iteration: the USPA (United States Parachute Association). Parachuting as a sport had begun to permeate the international community.
  In the 1970s sports skydiving became very popular thanks to a quick-release system of the main parachute based on the three rings or rings, designed by engineer Bill Booth, that allowed anyone to use it.
caption: Parachuting in late 19th century (Józef Dzikowski, Poland)
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