In 1952 Domina Jalbert advanced governable
gliding parachutes with multi-cells and controls for lateral glide.
In 1954, Walter Neumark predicted (in an
article in Flight magazine) a time when a glider pilot would be “able to launch
himself by running over the edge of a cliff or down a slope... whether on a
rock-climbing holiday in Skye or ski-ing in the Alps”.
In 1961, the French engineer Pierre Lemoigne
produced improved parachute designs which led to the Para-Commander. The ‘PC’,
had cut-outs at the rear and sides that enabled it to be towed into the air and
steered – leading to parasailing/parascending.
Sometimes credited with the greatest
development in parachutes since Leonardo da Vinci, the American Domina Jalbert
invented the Parafoil which had sectioned cells in an aerofoil shape; an open
leading edge and a closed trailing edge, inflated by passage through the air –
the ram-air design. He filed US Patent 3131894 on January 10, 1963.
Meanwhile, David Barish was developing the
Sail Wing (single-surface wing) for recovery of NASA space capsules – “slope
soaring was a way of testing out... the Sail Wing”. After tests on Hunter
Mountain, New York in September 1965, he went on to promote ‘slope soaring’ as
a summer activity for ski resorts (apparently without great success). NASA
originated the term ‘paraglider’ in the early 1960s, and ‘paragliding’ was
first used in the early 1970s to describe foot-launching of gliding parachutes.
