Patent
A patent was filed on July 27, 1918 and issued May 18, 1920 for his parachute. The assignee was the Floyd Smith Aerial Equipment Company of San Diego, California. Floyd with Leslie Leroy Irvin, developed a 28-foot backpack parachute. On April 28, 1919, Irvin jumped from a de Havilland biplane traveling at 100 miles per hour at an altitude of 1,500 feet. After Irvin bailed out of the airplane and falling free, he manually reached the ripcord handle and pulled it, and the parachute fully deployed at 1,000 feet. Irvin became the first American to jump from an airplane and manually open a parachute in midair. Floyd's original 1919 ripcord parachute is on display at the Air Force Museum at Dayton, Ohio.
Read more about this topic: James Floyd Smith
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