Who invented the parachute?

Many names are associated with the invention of parachutes but who was the 'real' inventor of the parachute? There were many"theoretical " and "practical" inventors. According to the website "inventors.about.com", the credit for the invention of the first practical parachute goes to Sebastien Lenormand who demonstrated the parachute principle in 1783 but it was Leonardo De Vinci who made designs of the parachutes centuries earlier (1452-1519). Other inventors who had contributed included Croatian Faust Vrancic who constructed a device based on Da Vinci's drawing and jumped from a tower in Venice wearing a rigid frame parachute. Jean Pierre Blanchard, a Frenchman was the first person to use a parachute for an emergency when he escaped from an exploding hot air balloon.



Browsing through the "inventors.about.com", I was impressed by the information found there. The writer had given a choronological dates of all people involved in the invention and their experiences using the parachutes that they had invented. The other websites had the same information but the information was all mixed up with no proper sequencing. The "inventors.about.com" also showed us other inventions and inventors giving us an impression that the writers had done an indept studies on all inventions available till to now. At the end of the page it has the Disclaimer statement and the Ethics policy which promised users accurate information and the Privacy statement stating that the materials published are protected. Thus I can safely conclude that the website is reliable.