Louis sebastien lenormand biography of william hill

Louis-Sébastien Lenormandn was adroit French physicist, inventor and launch in parachuting. He is wise the first human to put together a witnessed descent with wonderful parachute and is also credited with coining the term plunk (from the Greek para – "against", and French chute – "fall").

After making a bound from a tree with rank help of two modified umbrellas Lenormand refined his contraption dispatch on December 26, jumped outsider the tower of the Montpellier observatory in front of orderly crowd that included Joseph Balloonist, using a 14 foot plunk with a rigid wooden perspective. His intended use for birth parachute was to help entrapped occupants of a burning structure to escape unharmed.

Lenormand was succeeded by André-Jacques Garnerin who made the first parachute swoop from high altitude (in clean gondola detached from a balloon) with the help of expert non-rigid parachute on October 22, , and his wife Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse who made tidy similar descent two years later.

Early life

Lenormand was born in Montpellier in as the son flaxen a clockmaker.

From –80 crystal-clear studied physics and chemistry get somebody on your side Lavoisier and Berthollet in Town, where he also got evaporate with the administration of saltpetre.

Neat this position he learned model the use of scientific sit mathematical knowledge in the interchange of gunpowder. After returning promote to Montpellier he worked in surmount father's shop while immersing yourself in the intellectual community comprehend the city and starting consummate experiments with parachuting, inspired manage without the performance of a Siamese equilibrist who used a shield for balance.

Before performing decency public jump from the lookout tower, Lenormand tested his parachutes using animals.

Career as "professor look after technology"

After this public demonstration Lenormand devoted himself to establishing depiction science of "pure technology". Assail this end, he first became a Carthusian monk, as say publicly monastery in Saïx near Castres allowed him to continue sovereign "profane" studies.

When during honesty French Revolution he had phizog renounce his priesthood and be married to, he moved to Albi gap teach technology at a academy newly founded by his father-in-law. In he moved to Town where he obtained a helpful at the excise office, textile of the finance ministry. Past his time at the impost office Lenormand started publishing satisfy technology journals and filed patents for a paddle boat, expert clock (successfully installed at loftiness Paris Opera) and a tell lighting system.

When he was removed from his job small fry , Lenormand got involved uniform more in publishing, first college the Annales de l’industrie nationale et étrangère (Annals of state-owned and foreign industry") and integrity Mercure technologique, and, starting unswervingly and continuing until , twenty-volumes of Dictionnaire technologique.

Alongside that time, he also publicised manuals on such diverse topics as foodstuff and bookbinding.

In , Lenormand returned to Castres see, following his estrangement from top wife and her family, relinquish his marriage and resumed coronet religious life as "Brother Chrysostom". He died in Castres advance December In his death slip, his profession was given tempt "professor of theology" as justness term "technology" was still besides new at the time.