Skydiving - Militry Weapon to Adventure Sport

One day skydiving was considered hobby for billionaires, but now a day's skydiving is more affordable and famous among thousands of adventure addict personals. Skydiving is very popular now days, but very few know about inventors of skydiving sports activity and actual history about skydiving.

The history of skydiving can be traced back to hundreds of years ago when the Chinese first conceived the idea of parachuting in the 12^th century. Thereafter, in 1495, Leonardo da Vinci invented a pyramidal device with a wooden frame that quite resembled the modern day parachutes.

It was one Andre-Jacques Garnerin, a French citizen - who invented world's first parachute. During 18^th century, at Paris he jumped off an air -balloon and made a safe landing with his revolutionary device strapped on his back. He continued doing exhibition jumps in France and England for his remaining life.

When the Wright Brothers came up with first successful airplane flight in 1903, still parachuting technology was still far behind. In the years to come, however, efforts were made to develop parachutes on a large scale. It was during First World War that the military started to employ parachutes in their missions, and they were found to be useful particularly while allowing airborne units to make quick escapes.

When Second World War came, the paratroopers were deployed as surprise attacks by military. And they figured significantly in the Battle of Normandy, sneaking into enemy territory to secure major checkpoints.

By achievement of the paratroopers during the war, the US army was so encouraged that they decided to establish parachuting clubs around the country. Also, the great surplus of parachuting equipment and materials left after the war opened up the option of making parachuting available to the public. These factors marked the beginning of skydiving as a sport and leisure activity. Soon enough, popularity had spread across the globe, leading to the first world parachuting championships in Yugoslavia, held in the year 1951.

In the mid-1960s, first time efforts were made to modify military parachutes to suit the specific needs of sport parachuting. In 1964 a kite-maker by the name of Domina Jalbert from Canada invented the ram-air parachute, which became a standard design for sport parachutes ever since. With the ram-air system, the parachute offers better maneuverability and more efficient opening, which caters well to sport parachuting which is more free-form and stunt-based. It was about this time that sport parachutists started calling themselves skydivers.

Since then, more advanced and easy-to-use equipments have been developed to make skydiving a more accessible adventure sport. Now a day's Skydiving clubs are also increasing in numbers, offering improved training methods and high-tech safety measures.