Editing Fausto Veranzio (section)

===Veranzio's parachute===
[[File:Fausto Veranzio homo volans.jpg|thumb|160px|''"Machinae Novae"'' plate n. 38: Veranzio's parachute]]
One of the illustrations in ''Machinae Novae'' is a sketch of a [[parachute]] dubbed ''Homo Volans'' ("The Flying Man"). Having examined [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s rough [[Sketch (drawing)|sketch]]es of a parachute, Veranzio designed one of his own.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=quCh9tAW1jcC&q=veranzio&pg=PA176 "The Invention of the Parachute"], by [[Lynn White, Jr.]] in: ''[[Technology and Culture]]'', Vol. 9, No. 3. (1968), pp. 462-467 (463)</ref><ref>Jonathan Bousfield, [https://books.google.com/books?id=UxSnm-mUp40C&dq=Faust+Vran%C4%8Di%C4%87&pg=PA280 ''The Rough Guide to Croatia''], pg. 280, Rough Guides (2003), {{ISBN|1-84353-084-8}}</ref> [[Paolo Guidotti]] had already attempted to carry out the idea, ending by falling on a house roof and breaking his thigh bone (about 1590); but while [[Francis Godwin]] was writing his flying romance ''The Man in the Moone'', Fausto Veranzio is widely believed to have performed an actual parachute-jumping experiment<ref>{{cite book|author=Francis Trevelyan Miller|title=The World in the Air: The Story of Flying in Pictures|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MdDNAAAAMAAJ|year=1930|publisher=G.P. Putnam's Sons|pages=101–106}}</ref> and, therefore, to be the first man to build and test a parachute. According to legend, Veranzio, in 1617, at over sixty-five years of age, implemented his parachute design and tested it by jumping from [[St Mark's Campanile]] in Venice.<ref>{{cite book|author=Alfred Day Rathbone|title=He's in the paratroops now|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TM2EAAAAIAAJ|year=1943|publisher=R.M. McBride & Company}}</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2016}} This event was documented some 30 years later in the book ''[[Mathematical Magick|Mathematical Magick or, the Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanical Geometry]]'' (London, 1648), written by [[John Wilkins]], the secretary of the [[Royal Society]] in London.

But in his book, where Wilkins wrote about flying and the possibility of human flight,<ref name="Magick">''Mathematical Magick'', second book, chapter VII</ref> methods of slowing down people's fall through the air were not his concern. His treatise does not even mention Veranzio by name, nor does it document any jump by parachute or any event at all in 1617.<ref name="Magick"/> No evidence has ever been found of any test of Veranzio's parachute.