First Parachute that is Opened by a Ripcord.
In 1920, inventor Floyd Smith received U.S. Patent No. 1,340,423 for the “Floyd Smith Aerial Life Pack,” the first parachute to rely on a manually operated rip cord.

Smith’s first jump was made with a static-line chute, which attached to the plane. Though he managed to land safely, he realized how easily he could have become entangled in the parachute cord following his jump. Not long after this first jump, Smith’s wife had a harrowing experience with a parachute jump of her own. At this point, Smith became convinced that a manually operated parachute worn by the jumper rather than attached to the plane would be an ideal solution.

Smith designed a parachute that would be worn on the body and could be released by a mechanism that was attached to the pack itself. This model would allow jumpers to deploy the parachute’s canopy manually, using a ripcord.

Around the time Smith filed a patent to protect his parachute design, in July 1918, he was hired by the U.S. Army to inspect and test planes at South Field in Dayton, Ohio. This was during World War I, at a time when a rise in the number of military pilot fatalities meant the Army was in need of a reliable parachute for emergency escapes.
Parachute

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