wind tunnel inventor

[joesky 0]

some might find the following interesting - copied from an obituary appearing in the Globe and Mail today about the the passing of Jean St. Germain and written by Tu Thanh Ha:

"....St Germain, a grade school dropout and former army para trooper who became a prolific inventor, died Sept 16... he was 79.... enlisted in the army in 1954, joining the Royal 22nd Regiment...trained as a paratrooper and was posted in West Germany... back in civilian life, he started a family, taught parachuting and settled in the Saint Hyacinthe area... At one point he ran a parachute school, so the family lived in an aviation hangar next to a 1930's DC-3 transport plane... one of his more successful ideas was the Aerodium, a 23 metre high silo with a propeller at the bottom that acts like a vertical wind tunnel, allowing people to soar in the airflow and experience the sensation of skydiving....Mr. St. Germain was featured in People magazine in 1982 when the American real estate tycoon Marvin Kratter paid him $ 1.5 million (US) for the franchising rights of the Aerodium.

[councilman24 37]

Not the inventor.

http://www.indoorskydivingsource.com/articles/a-complete-history-of-the-vertical-wind-tunnel/

Quote

The tunnel at Wright-Patterson became famous in the world of indoor skydiving due to the fact that in 1964 the late Jack Tiffany became the first recorded human to ever fly in a wind tunnel at the Wright-Patterson machine. (2a) At that time, Jack was working with the Apollo space program testing parachute clusters. (17) In a 2008 interview, he stated "We were running damn near around the clock," he told Military Times. "It was 2 a.m., and everyone was a little slap-happy. I said: "Fire this puppy up. I think I can fly. They fired it up, and I flew." (3)

I'm old for my age.
Terry Urban
D-8631
FAA DPRE

[TerraDactyl 0]

joesky

St. Germain was featured in People magazine in 1982...

See that article here:
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20083082,00.html