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The
parachute, an innovation that has saved so many lives, was not invented
by an aerospace engineer. Rather, the modern backpack parachute was
patented by a Russian actor in 1911. Gleb Kotelnikov felt compelled to
do something after he saw a pilot die during an air show in St.
Petersburg.
Kotelnikov’s innovation came with the
realization that for a parachute to save lives, it had to meet two
primary qualifications: it had to always be with the pilot –ideally, it
would be attached to him in some way– and it had to open automatically –
presumably to protect the pilot if he lost consciousness. He developed
several prototypes that met these qualifications, including a parachute
helmet, a parachute belt, and a parachute attached to several points of
the body via an elaborate harness. Eventually he came up a working model
for a stable parachute in a hard knapsack that would be attached to the
pilot by a harness. He dubbed the invention the RK-1 (Russian
Kotelnikov 1). The RK-1 was attached to the plane by static line that
would pull the chute open once the pilot reached the proper distance
from the aircraft, but it could also be opened manually by pulling a
cord.
But the Russian military resisted using
Kotelnikov's invention, because they thought it would encourage pilots
to abandon malfunctioning planes -which would be a waste of planes! But
eventually, the innovation spread all over the world. Read how it
happened at
Design Decoded.
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