The name parachute comes from two French words, parer, to parry and chute, a fall, and it signifies a contrivance, made more or less in the form of an enormous umbrella, to break the fall from a balloon or other great height. The principle of the parachute was understood even before the invention of the balloon. In Eastern countries, in particular, where the umbrella or parasol has been in familiar use from earliest ages, parachutes were frequently employed by acrobats to enable them to jump safely from great elevations. In France also, at the end of the eighteenth century, a captive officer attempted to escape from a lofty prison by similar means.
The aeronaut Blanchard was the first to construct a parachute for use from a balloon, his idea being that it might prove of service in the event of an accident while aloft. In 1785 he let down from a great height a parachute to which was attached a dog in a basket, which reached the ground gently and safely. After this M. Garnerin, the famous balloonist already referred to, hazarded a parachute descent in person, and his attempt being eminently satisfactory, parachute descents became fairly common.
In August 1814 Mr. Cocking, an English gentleman of scientific tastes, read a paper on parachutes, suggesting an amendment in their shape and construction, before the Society of Arts, for which he was awarded a medal. His theory was never put into practice, however, till twenty-three years later, when, fired no doubt by the interest aroused by the famous Nassau voyage, he resolved to put his invention to the test.
He accordingly constructed his parachute, which was of enormous size, of unwieldy weight, and in shape rather resembling an umbrella turned inside out. Despite the warning of friends that the untried machine was unwisely built, he insisted on making a descent with it, and succeeded in persuading Mr. Green to take him and his craft aloft attached to the Nassau balloon.
Cocking’s Parachute.
On the 27th of July 1837 they started from the Vauxhall Gardens, Mr. Green in the car accompanied by Mr. Edward Spencer (grandfather of the present well-known firm of aeronauts), his friend and frequent companion; Mr. Cocking seated in his machine slung below. A height of 5000 feet was attained, and then Mr. Cocking, after bidding a hearty farewell to the others, pulled the rope which liberated his parachute from the balloon. Relieved from the enormous weight, the latter rushed upwards into the sky with terrific velocity, the gas pouring in volumes from the valves and almost suffocating the occupants of the car. Their position, indeed, for the time was one of the greatest danger, and they were thankful to reach the earth unharmed, which they eventually did. But their fate was happier far than that of the luckless Cocking, whose parachute, after swaying fearfully from side to side, at length utterly collapsed, and falling headlong, was, with its inventor, dashed to pieces.
While Charles Green was making his famous ascents in England, an equally celebrated aeronaut, John Wise, was pursuing the same art in America. During a long and successful career, unhappily terminated by an accident, Wise made many experiments in the construction of balloons, their shape, size, varnish, material, and so forth. His results, which he carefully put together, have been of the greatest value to balloon manufacturers until the present time. In the course of his many voyages he met with various exciting adventures. On one occasion while aloft he saw before him a huge black cloud of particularly forbidding aspect. Entering this, he found himself in the heart of a terrific storm. His balloon was caught in a whirlwind, and set so violently spinning and swinging that he was sea-sick with the motion, while, at the same time, he felt himself half-suffocated and scarce able to breathe. Within the cloud the cold was intense; the ropes of the balloon became glazed with ice and snow till they resembled glass rods; hail fell around, and the gloom was so great that from the car the silk above became invisible. “A noise resembling the rushing of a thousand mill-dams, intermingled with a dismal moaning sound of wind, surrounded me in this terrible flight.” Wise adds, “Bright sunshine was just above the clouds;” but though he endeavoured to reach it by throwing out ballast, the balloon had no sooner begun to rise upwards than it was caught afresh by the storm and whirled down again. Neither was he able, by letting out gas, to escape this furious vortex from beneath; and for twenty minutes he was swept to and fro, and up and down in the cloud, before he could get clear of it, or regain any control over his balloon.
On another occasion Wise made an exceedingly daring and bold experiment. Convinced of the power which, as has before been said, an empty balloon has of turning itself into a natural parachute, he determined to put the matter to the test, and deliberately to burst his balloon when at a great height. For this purpose he made a special balloon of very thin material, and fastened up the neck so that there was no vent for the gas. He then ascended fearlessly to a height of 13,000 feet, where, through the expansion of the hydrogen with which it was filled, his balloon exploded. The gas escaped instantly, so that in ten seconds not a trace remained. The empty balloon at first descended with fearful rapidity, with a strange moaning sound as the air rushed through the network. Then the silk assuming parachute shape, the fall became less rapid, and finally the car, coming down in zigzags, turned upside down when close to the ground, and tossed Wise out into a field unhurt.
It was John Wise’s great desire at one time to sail a balloon right across the Atlantic from America to Europe. Long study of the upper winds had convinced him that a regular current of air is always blowing steadily high aloft from west to east, and he believed that if an aeronaut could only keep his balloon in this upper current he might be carried across the ocean quicker, and with more ease and safety, than in the fastest steamship. Wise went so far as to work out all the details for this plan, the size of the balloon required, the ballast, provisions, and number of passengers; and only the want of sufficient money prevented him from actually making the attempt. Curiously enough, about the same time, Charles Green, in England, was, quite independently, working at the same idea, which he also believed, with proper equipment, to be quite feasible.