1926 Aviation magazine cover

[indyz 1]

I found a big stack of 1920s Aviation magazines at work today. Issued weekly, $.15 per issue cover price. I was just glancing through the stack when I saw a great cover shot of two jumpers going off of a Martin Bomber. I also found an old Irvin ad, and another from Henning, who supplied parachutes used to airdrop typewriters (that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, either). These are all from 1926-1927.

It looks like there are hundreds of these magazines. I've only had time to look through a couple dozen, but hopefully I'll find time to check out the rest over the next few weeks.

[gus 1]

Cool find.

Gus

OutpatientsOnline.com

[JohnRich 4]

Wow! That's neat stuff. Please share more when you can.

Who knows why they saw fit to air-drop typewriters? If someone in the wilderness needed a typewriter that bad, wouldn't there be a road to get it to him on the ground? War-time record keeping?

[Reginald 0]

Quote

Wow! That's neat stuff. Please share more when you can.

Who knows why they saw fit to air-drop typewriters? If someone in the wilderness needed a typewriter that bad, wouldn't there be a road to get it to him on the ground? War-time record keeping?

Well it was the Brits, you know how they like everything to be orderly.

"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things." CP

[indyz 1]

Found a few more. These start to get into the 1930s. Sorry about the quality, the compression settings were wrong and I didn't notice until the original scans were destroyed.

[mjosparky 4]

Quote

Well it was the Brits, you know how they like everything to be orderly.

Where did you come up with they were Brits?

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[Orange1 0]

Would be interesting to know what happened to the companies in those ads...Irvin, Russel, Switlik, Triangle... did they somewhere along the way get subsumed into any of the current equipment manufacturers?

Skydiving: wasting fossil fuels just for fun.

[nitrochute 2]

well irvin became irvin aerospace,owned by wardle stories(the same company that bought paraflite). switlik is still around altho no longer making parachutes,just inflateable life vests and life rafts.

[mjosparky 4]

Quote

well irvin became irvin aerospace,owned by wardle stories(the same company that bought paraflite). switlik is still around altho no longer making parachutes,just inflateable life vests and life rafts.

I thought Irvin Aerospace USA, Irvin Canada and ParaFlite were owned by Airborne Systems.

http://www.airbornesystems-na.com/

Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[mdrejhon 8]

Quote

Would be interesting to know what happened to the companies in those ads...Irvin, Russel, Switlik, Triangle... did they somewhere along the way get subsumed into any of the current equipment manufacturers?

This website is very interesting reading:
www.irvinaerospace.com

Apparently, they're still around. (You oldtimers know this, but newbies like me and you don't know this). In the business for 85 years, wow! They also make the shuttle landing parachute too.

Still a fair bit of resemblance in the logo. 1927 Logo and 2006 Logo.

[wartload 0]

Thanks for posting the ads -- especially number 8 because it mentions the use of pongee silk for parachutes. That's the origin of what we currently call "bungee cords." The words are pronounced almost the same.

[mjosparky 4]

Quote

Quote

Would be interesting to know what happened to the companies in those ads...Irvin, Russel, Switlik, Triangle... did they somewhere along the way get subsumed into any of the current equipment manufacturers?

This website is very interesting reading:
www.irvinaerospace.com

Apparently, they're still around. (You oldtimers know this, but newbies like me and you don't know this). In the business for 85 years, wow! They also make the shuttle landing parachute too.

Still a fair bit of resemblance in the logo. 1927 Logo and 2006 Logo.

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[skypuppy 1]

Quote

Would be interesting to know what happened to the companies in those ads...Irvin, Russel, Switlik, Triangle... did they somewhere along the way get subsumed into any of the current equipment manufacturers?

I think Russell went out of business in the '30's after a law suit with Irvin over the rights to freefall type parachutes.... John Tranum originally was a test jumper for the Russell Lobe, then switched over to the Irvin chute. He preferred the way the Irvin chute deployed -- the Russell chute didn't have a pilot chute. You can see the different shapes in the ads....

Note the early Irvin parachute ads -- Irvin air chutes made by the Irving Parachute company.... When Leslie Irvin filed his paperwork in 1920 or so to make the parachutes, there was a typo which added the 'g' to the company name, and he couldn't afford to file new paperwork to change it.

I believe Hoffman (of Triangle Parachutes) actually did most of the design for the Irvin parachute, they were part of a team at McCook field, but Irvin was the one who got to do the first live drop test of a freefall rig, and was the first one with the most complete proposal to supply the chutes for the military, so he became a millionaire....

The new Cirrus Sr-20 and Sr-22 come standard with a rocket-deployed whole-plane emergency chute -- for a little more than $300,000. They can be retro-fitted onto cessnas for about $20,000, but the whole system, with some reinforcing, also weighs about 80 lbs....

Edited to ad cover pic from Dec 04 Flying Magazine (Cirrus whole-plane parachute)

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone