(obsolete) A child's hornbook for learning the alphabet. 1802, William Hutton, The History of the Roman Wall, preface You will also pardon the errors of the Work, for you know I was not bred to letters; but, that the battledore, at an age not exceeding six, was the last book I used at school. (obsolete) A bat or beetle used in washing clothes.
The parachute, like the helicopter and the hang glider, dates back to the drawings of mankind's greatest public genius, Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo designed a multitude of mechanical devices, including parachutes, and studied the flight of birds as well as their structure. About 1485 he drew detailed plans for a human-powered ornithopter (a wing-flapping device intended to fly).