Who Invented Paragliding and When Did It Start? A Complete History

Among all forms of free flight, paragliding stands out as both the newest and the fastest-growing. The equipment couldn't be simpler: a foldable glider and a harness. What makes it genuinely remarkable as a soaring aircraft is its portability , the whole setup compresses into a large backpack that pilots carry themselves, opening up launch sites that would otherwise be inaccessible and dramatically expanding where you can land and return from.

Worldwide, paragliding claims more than 200,000 active pilots. Europe dominates the sport, with Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy alone accounting for upwards of 125,000 pilots as of 2004. The United States had roughly 5,000 pilots by 2011, though those numbers have been climbing steadily. Pilots launch either by running off a hillside or by being towed up with a winch. The glider stays airborne through a ram-air construction that continuously inflates the wing as it moves forward, effectively mimicking the cross-section of an airplane wing and generating lift. Control comes from two vertical riser lines connected to the trailing edges on either side of the canopy.

History and Origins

Paragliding's story really begins in the world of parachuting. Back in the early 1960s, American parachutist Pierre Lemoigne made a breakthrough by cutting slots into traditional round parachute canopies. Letting air flow through the canopy transformed the lift-to-drag ratio and , crucially , gave pilots genuine, predictable steering control for the first time.

Walter Newmark of England caught wind of Lemoigne's innovation in 1962 and pushed it further, modifying the design so that the canopy could actually be towed into the air. Parascending caught on quickly across England throughout the decade, and Newmark formalized the movement by founding the British Association of Parascending in the early 1970s.

Then in 1964, Florida-based inventor Domina Jalbert changed everything with a square canopy he called the Ram Air Para Foil. By allowing air to pass through a double-surface design, the Ram Air delivered substantially better maneuverability and lift than anything that had come before. Newmark wasted no time incorporating it into his parascending work.

The sport didn't really explode, though, until the 1970s. The pivotal moment came in the French Alpine town of Mieussy, where pilots discovered they could launch the wing simply by sprinting down a hillside. Andre Bohn and Gerard Bosson are widely credited with shaping the sport into its modern form. Bosson brought paragliding to an international audience at the 1979 World Hang Gliding Championships, and within a short time, schools dedicated entirely to the discipline were sprouting up across the globe.

Related Sports

Paragliding's surge in popularity didn't happen in isolation , it pulled several offshoot disciplines along with it. Both are still growing, with increasingly specialized equipment emerging to support them:

• Powered paragliding attaches a small engine to the standard paraglider setup, allowing pilots to fly without relying on thermals or hillside launches.
• Speed riding uses much smaller, faster wings that sacrifice soaring capability in exchange for raw speed. Pilots launch on foot or on skis and carve aggressively down steep slopes in close proximity to the terrain , skiers can even graze the surface deliberately as part of the experience.