Parachute

“ Immediately it releases the cords that hold the parachute in folds and the silk spreads out in the form of an immense umbrella. The air, getting under this, acts as a brake, and the person comes to the ground much more gently than otherwise would be the case. Even with the parachutes, however, there is danger in the fall, if it happens to be in a tree, and often there is peril in falling into the water. ”

“ If a parachute is folded wrong, some fine fellow comes shooting down, down, thousands of feet to his death. But you—you love to do things just right, even bed sheets.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Then you’ll be the best there is. Good parachute riggers are hard to get. Of course,” Belle went on, “you don’t just fold parachutes and pack them. You select large ones for large people.”
“And small ones for small people!”
“Sure! In some of them you pack iron rations, food for a day or so. In others you’ll put light pneumatic rubber rafts and fishing line—that’s in case the flier might land in the sea. ”

“ Monsieur Nadar writes on this point as follows:—
“Let us consider the action of the parachute.
“A parachute is a sort of umbrella, in which the handle is replaced at its point of insertion by an opening intended to ease the excess of air, in order to avoid the strong oscillations, chiefly at the moment at which it is first expanded. Cords, departing symmetrically from divers points of the circumference, meet concentrically at the basket in which is the aeronaut. ”

“ But in a few moments, the air rushing into the folds of the parachute, forces them open like an umbrella, and immediately, owing to the wide surface which this contrivance presents to the atmosphere, the violence of the descent is arrested, and the aeronaut falls gently to the ground, without receiving too rude a shock. ”

“ Occasionally, the descent of the parachute would be arrested by a sudden vicious upswing of a wind channel, as though Kuan Yu, the God of War were striking out with his fists, flaying the very air itself even as the entire earth was being churned by his huge iron heels. ”

“ The parachute, released from a part of the weight which had held it steady, careened, was caught by a sidewise gust of wind, and, bellying out like a sail, it dragged the two aerial travelers through the top [Pg 82] most branches in short, vicious jerks which made Stuart feel as though he were being pulled apart. This lasted but a minute or two, however, when the parachute itself, torn, and caught in the branches, came to anchor. ”

“ Well, I felt sick all over as I looked at him there, and I understood why the balloon had taken longer to right itself, and why George had called after me to ride her down. Should I cut loose with the parachute, the bag would at once turn upside down, empty itself, and begin its swift descent. The only hope lay in my riding her down and in the boy holding on. There was no possible way for me to reach him. No man could climb the slim, closed parachute; and even if a man could, and made the mouth of the balloon, what could he do? ”

“ Sometimes the aeronaut makes his descent by means of the parachute, a separate and distinct contrivance. If, from any cause, it appears impracticable to effect a descent from the balloon itself, the parachute may be of the greatest service to the voyager at the present day it is chiefly used to astonish the public, by showing them the spectacle of a man who, from a great elevation in the air, precipitates himself into space, not to escape dangers which threaten him in his balloon, but simply to exhibit his courage and skill. ”

“ Either the parachute would come to the ground with a force incompatible with the safety of the individual, or should it be attempted to make it sufficiently light to resist this conclusion, it must give way beneath the forces which will develop in the descent. ”

“ A parachute is a thing that you fall out of a balloon with. It is something like an open umbrella, only nobody ever borrows it. If you hold a parachute over your head and drop out of a balloon, it will hold you up so that you will come down to the ground so gently that you won't be hurt the least bit. ”

“ At ten thousand feet the pressure of gas had become so great that the silk envelope was ruptured, and the terrified travellers realised that they were falling rapidly. They then left the car, and climbed into the network. Fortunately, as the balloon collapsed more and more, it took the form of a parachute, and eventually landed two miles from the starting-point, with its passengers more terrified than hurt. ”

“ Experience has proved that, in the case of a descending parachute, if the rapidity of the descent is doubled the resistance of the air is quadrupled; if the rapidity is triple the resistance is increased ninefold; or, to speak in language of science, the resistance of the air is increased by the square of the swiftness of the body in motion. This resistance increases in proportion as the parachute spreads, and thus the uniformity of its fall is established a minute after it has been disengaged from the balloon. ”

“ Let the strings be 2 feet long: fasten them to the loop; gather them together; wind them round the colour, above the pulley; fold the parachute neatly, and bring the edges down over the strings, nearly to reach the pulley: this will keep the parachute a little open, and help it to expand. Both the tissue paper and the glazed lining should be well rubbed, to get the stiffness out of them. To ascertain how a parachute will act, the learner can take the colour case, and stop one end with plaster, fill up with sand, and stop the other end with plaster. Fire it in the day time. ”

“ Thus the parachute was instrumental in saving many lives during the Great War, and in peace times it will probably be further developed for use in connection with the airplane as well as the balloon. Here the great difficulty lies in the fact that the pilot is strapped in his seat, and that he would not have time, in case of an accident in mid-air, to unstrap himself and attach a parachute device to his body. This might be overcome by having an apparatus already attached, so that all he would have to do would be to free himself from his seat and leap over the side. ”

“ The aviator himself is attached to the parachute through the shock-absorber sling, by means of a harness which he wears constantly throughout his flight, so that in the event of trouble he only has to jump overboard and the parachute automatically does the rest. ”

“ Incidentally I learned that but two or three such forced descents by parachute from a flaming balloon are permitted any one observer. These jumps are not always so simple and frequently very serious if not fatal injuries are received in the parachute jump. Seldom does one officer care to risk himself in a balloon basket after his third jump. ”

“ In order to provide aeronauts with a means of escape—a last resource in case of accident—the parachute was invented. It may be regarded as a balloon’s lifeboat, which will (perhaps!) bear the passengers in safety to the ground in case of balloon-wreck.
Doubtless the umbrella suggested the parachute. Every one knows the tremendous force that this implement exerts in a high wind if the unfortunate owner should happen to get turned round in the wrong direction. ”

“ He was off the twelve-lane highway and on a feeder road when the chute was a hundred feet high. He was racing across a field of olive-green plants that went all the way to the horizon when the parachute actually touched ground. ”

“ Then he turned and swooped down on the balloon, swift as a hawk at its prey. He swerved upwards as he passed it and all four Germans soared rapidly upwards and away. We saw something drop suddenly from the balloon, which rapidly developed into a parachute with two observers clinging to it. A thin wisp of smoke which we could detect from the balloon then burst into flames, and the blazing material began to drop towards the parachute. But the automobile to which the silk observation tower was attached began to move, and the fiery mass missed the parachute on the way down. ”

“ The stays of the parachute having unfortunately given way, its proper balance was disturbed, and, on reaching the ground, it struck against it with such violence, as to throw him on his face, by which he received some severe cuts. To let down a man of ordinary size from any height, a parachute of a hemispherical form, twenty-five feet in diameter, is required. ”

“ A descending balloon half-full of gas either does rise, or can with a little management be made to rise, to the top of the netting and take the form of a parachute, thus materially lessening the rapidity of descent. Wise, in fact, having noticed this, once purposely exploded his balloon when at a considerable altitude, and the resistance offered to the air by the envelope of the balloon was sufficient to enable him to reach the ground without injury. In more recent times the use of the parachute has become fairly common, but a good many serious accidents have occurred. ”

“ On the right hand of the illustration is the ordinary Parachute as it appears when open and closed, in either case having somewhat the appearance of a large umbrella. It is hung to the balloon in its closed state, and when detached it falls rapidly for a yard or two with startling rapidity. The pressure of the air thus forces the ribs open, and gives sufficient assistance to the atmosphere to insure a gentle fall. ”

“ The professor passed the leather strap round Bunch's body and up under his arms, and buckled it. Then he spoke the first words he had uttered since they had left the earth.
"You'll drop about three hundred feet before the parachute opens. When it opens, you'll rebound about forty feet. Hold on as tight as you can,—but remember anyway that, whether you lose your grip or not, you can't fall. ”

“ Tom cried, for there was one of these life-savers for every person on board. As you know, all the mail-plane fliers now wear these “umbrellas,” as do all army fliers. The parachute is made from a particular kind of raw silk cloth. It can be folded into a very small compass, and is strapped around a flier’s body by means of leather belts going around his legs and waist. On the waist belt is an iron ring, and as the person jumps from a burning plane, or one that is crippled and falling, this iron ring is pulled. ”

“ It is very commonly supposed that the parachute, in anything like its present form, is a very modern device, and that the art of successfully using it had not been introduced to the world even so lately as thirty years ago. ”

“ But to watch a parachute fail to open, and the next instant to trust your life to the proper working of your own, is rather a severe test, and it is little wonder that both Dixie and the Boy waited another second watching and waiting before leaping over. They saw a lick of flame flicker along the top of the attacked balloon, die down, flash out again—and then caught sight of the Hun scout wheeling and heading for their balloon. ”

“ The air, gathering end compressed under it, would sometimes escape by one side sometimes by the other, thus shaking and whirling the parachute about with a violence which, however great, had happily no unfortunate effect. ”

“ To anyone who thinks of this matter it will be clear that a relatively heavy weight like a man, suspended from a parachute, is like a very delicately poised pendulum, and consequently it is not surprising to hear that the early parachutes oscillated very considerably from side to side, so much so, indeed, that this oscillation became a decided danger, for before the proper shape of the air-bag was found out they sometimes skidded and even turned inside out. ”

“ The parachute lay flat along the ground and beyond it the trapeze. I tossed aside my overcoat, took my position, and gave the signal to let go. As you know, the first rush upward from the earth is very sudden, and this time the balloon, when it first caught the wind, heeled violently over and was longer than usual in righting. ”

“ Great damage was done to buildings, trees were uprooted, and “locomotion was extremely difficult and laborious, and, indeed, quite out of the question to those of the fair sex whose fashionable expanded dresses, assuming the properties of parachutes, compelled them to undertake a species of aerial voyage for a distance of a few yards, or exposed them to the still more unpleasant predicament of having their parachute p. ”

“ In cases of engine failure the aviator can very often glide down safely to the earth; while in wartime, there is always the possibility that if the wings of the airplane were damaged by enemy fire the parachute also might be impaired.
An interesting use of the parachute was made by bombing airplanes and Zeppelins during the Great War. The pilots of these craft dropped flares or lights attached to parachutes, and by means of these they succeeded in locating their objectives and at the same time in “blinding” the operators of searchlights and anti-aircraft guns. ”

“ Baldwin's parachute, on the contrary, was reckoned to give safe descent to 250 lbs., which would include weight of man and apparatus, and reduce the ultimate fall to one not exceeding 8 feet. The parachute was attached to the ring of a small balloon of 12,000 cubic feet, and the Professor ascended, sitting on a mere sling of rope, which did duty for a car.
Mr. Thomas Moy, who investigated the mechanics of the contrivance, estimated that after a drop of 16 feet, the upward pressure, amounting to over 2 lb. per square foot, would act on a surface of not less than 254 square feet. ”

“ Bill dragged himself on to the back of his seat, which, now due to the plane’s almost vertical position, had become a small, horizontal platform. With a hand on the pull ring of his parachute pack, he dived head first over the cockpit’s cowl into the open ether.
The approved types of parachutes are the manually operated free type. A “free” type parachute is one that is complete in one unit, strapped to the person of an aviator by a suitable harness, and one that has no attachments whatever to the aircraft. ”