(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.
While the early parachutes were made of linen stretched over a wooden frame, in the late 1790s, Blanchard began making parachutes from folded silk, taking advantage of silk's strength and light weight. In 1797, Andrew Garnerin made the first jump using such a parachute. Garnerin also invented the vented parachute, which improved the stability of the fall. In 1890, Paul Letteman and Kathchen Paulus made the first knapsack parachute. On March 1, 1912, US Army Captain Albert Berry made the first parachute jump from a moving airplane over Missouri. Å tefan BaniÄ from Slovakia registered the first modern parachute patent in 1913.