Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: August 31, 2004
Article Type: Journal

As skydiving icon Bill Ottley, of Washington, D.C., notes, people in his sport tend to think of today, of the moment; or maybe tomorrow, what’s ahead? But yesterday, or history, doesn’t interest them much.

Holder of degrees from Yale, Georgetown, and Embry Riddle, Ottley, a much-honored veteran of parachuting, has a more scholarly take. He knows and honors the history of the sport.

Ottley in the late l960s in fact flew down to Boca Raton, Florida, specifically to meet Domina Jalbert, inventor of the Parafoil. It was Jalbert’s ram air inflation concept that led to the steerable square parachute and to safer, more precise jumping. The new ‘chute had two layers of fabric and in flight air was ducted between the layers, forming a semi-rigid airfoil cross-section, enabling the freefaller to “fly” the ‘chute down like a highly maneuverable glider. “I wanted him to know the parachuting world recognized his genius,” says Ottley. “He had invented something basic to aviation. It was something that rearranged the lives and even the safety of an enormous number of people- –hundreds of thousands of people around the world have skydived at least once, and here in the United States more than 40,000 people are active in the sport today.”

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