Stefan Banic ( Slovak. Štefan Banič , November 23, 1870 - January 2, 1941 ) - Slovak designer and inventor . Known for the creation of the first army parachute .
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Biography
Born November 23, 1870 in a peasant family in the village of Neshtikh (now part of the village of Smolenice ) in Austria-Hungary , in what is now Slovakia . He worked as a bricklayer for some time, then went in search of a better life to the USA, where he worked as a miner at a coal mine in Pennsylvania . He was interested in aircraft engineering.
In 1913, he created a prototype of a parachute, and on June 3, 1913 in Washington, he jumped from a 41-story building to demonstrate his invention to representatives of the US Patent Office and the command of the American armed forces .
In 1914 he made a parachute jump from an airplane.
On August 25, 1914, he received a patent [1] , which was then transferred to the US Army.
Banich's parachute was a kind of umbrella with telescopic spokes attached to the body. It was the first widely used type of parachute, in particular, it was used in the US Air Force during the First World War .
After the war, Banich returned to Slovakia, where he lived quite alone, doing stone work. He became one of the discoverers of the Drina cave in the Little Carpathians .
He died on January 2, 1941 in Neshtih . A parachute is depicted on the gravestone.
Notes
- US Patent No. 1,108,484 dated August 25, 1914. Parachute . Patent description on the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office .