James Floyd Smith
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James Floyd Smith or J. Floyd Smith (October 17, 1884 – April 18, 1956) was a test pilot and instructor for Glenn Martin and was a manufacturer of parachutes. He built and flew his own plane in 1912 and invented the manually operated parachute for the Army in 1918. He was awarded the Aero Club of America Medal or Merit.
He was born in Illinois and both his parents were from California. In 1907 he married Hilder Florentina Youngber and they had a son: Prevost Floyd Smith (1914-1991). James soloed on June 1, 1912 in a plane that he built in Stanton, California. In April of 1914, Glenn Martin needed a female parachutist to make a jump at the ceremonies dedicating the new Los Angeles Harbor and James asked his wife to make the jump. Hilder Florentina Smith had never made a parachute jump before. A deal was made that if she would make the jumps that she could use one of the Martin planes for practice and instruction under Floyd's supervision. Floyd established three flight altitude records using a Martin S plane at San Diego in 1915. Two years later he made one of the first simulated carrier landings at North Island. During WWI he received his first patent on a parachute, which was a manually operated pack. In January of 1919 Floyd was put in charge of all parachute work at McCook Field. Floyd was associated with the Russel Parachute Company, in San Diego in the early twenties, and later was the co-founder of the Pioneer Parachute Company, with the Cheney Silk Mills in Connecticut. They received a $15 million dollar contract from the Navy tp produce parachutes. In 1930 the family was living in Morrisville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania abd James was working as an engineer. While with Pioneer, his son Prevost Floyd Smith developed the Pioneer test tower at El Centro, California, which is still in use. Prevost and Floyd started the Smith Parachute Company in San Diego County, California which became the Prevost Smith Parachute Company after Floyd's death. He died in 1956 of cancer and was buried in the Portal of Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation.
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[edit] Patent
Patent U.S. Patent 1340423 was filed on July 27, 1918 and issued May 18, 1920 for his parachute. The asignee was the Floyd Smith Aerial Equipment Company of San Diego, California. Floyd with Leslie Leroy Irvin, developed a 28-foot backpack parachute. On April 28, 1919, Irvin jumped from a de Havilland biplane traveling at 100 miles per hour at an altitude of 1,500 feet. After Irvin bailed out of the airplane and falling free, he manually reached the ripcord handle and pulled it, and the parachute fully deployed at 1,000 feet. Irvin became the first American to jump from an airplane and manually open a parachute in midair. [1]
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- Time (magazine); April 30, 1956; Died. James Floyd Smith, 71, onetime dauntless barnstorming flyer and test pilot, who invented the modern ripcord parachute, founder of the Pioneer Parachute Company; of cancer; in San Diego.
- Star-News; December 18, 1956, Pasadena, California. (CNS) Memorial services for James Floyd Smith, pioneer aviator and one of the first men to ever parachute from a plane, were held at the Portal of the ...
- Washington Post; April 1956; James Floyd Smith, 71. Aeronautic engineer and pioneer flier who invented the first successful free type of manually operated parachute now used by the Air Force, established three altutude records for seaplanes and was awarded the Aero Club of America Medal or Merit; in San Diego, California. ...
