PARACHUTE (Fr. chute, a fall), a machine invented for the purpose of retarding the velocity of descent of any body through the air, and employed by aeronauts as a means of descending from balloons. It is a gigantic umbrella, strongly made, and having the outer extremities of the rods, on which the canvas is stretched, firmly connected by ropes or stays to the lower part of the handle. The handle of the parachute is a hollow iron tube, through which passes a rope connecting the balloon above with the car (in which are the aeronauts and their apparatus) beneath, but so fastened, that when the balloon is cut loose, the car and parachute still remain connected. When the balloon ascends, the parachute collapses like an umbrella; but when the balloon rope is severed, and the ear begins to descend, the parachute is extended by the action of the air, and prevents the car from acquiring a dangerous velocity of descent; the final velocity in hose cases where the machine is of a size proportioned to the weight it has to support, being no more than would he acquired by a person leaping from a height of between two and three feet. But the slightest derangement of the parachute's equilibrium. such
as might be caused by a breath of wind, or the smallest deviation from perfect symme try in the parachute itself, immediately produces an oscillatory motion of the car, hay big the apex of the parachute as a center, and the oscillations becoming gradually greater and more rapid, the occupants of the ear are in most cases either pitched out or are along with it dashed on the ground with frightful force. This defect in the parachute has been attempted to be remedied in various ways, but hitherto without success. The first successful experiment with the parachute was made by Blanchard at Strasburg in 1:787, and the experiment has been often, repeated by Garnerin and others; very frequently, however, with fatal results.
The parachute was employed by capt. Boxer, R.N., as an essential part of his patent light-ball, for discovering the movements of an enemy at night, and was so arranged at to open up when the lighted ball had attained its greatest elevation, so as to keep it fot a considerable period almost suspended in the.air.