How they tried to cheat the inventor of the Russian parachute.
"Hundreds of idlers are roaming the sky. What have you done, Comrade Kotelnikov? " This comical couplet is familiar to anyone who has at least some connection to the skydiving business. Gleb Yevgenievich Kotelnikov turned the parachute from a dangerous device into a real means of rescue; They began to use it en masse. It began development after witnessing the death of a pilot.
In 1911, an expert committee killed the project, but the parachute, called "RK-1", was nevertheless created with money from a private investor. But the investor turned out to be a fraud and sold several models in France. Later similar parachutes began to be produced there, but this led to sad results; They could not repeat Kotelnikov's success abroad.
Photo: Collage AiF.