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Concept
James Floyd Smith
Summary
James Floyd Smith (17 October 1884 – 18 April 1956) was an inventor, aviation pioneer, and parachute manufacturer. With borrowed money, he built, then taught himself to fly his own airplane.
He worked as a flight instructor and test pilot for Glenn L. Martin at Bennett's bean field, which became LAX. From San Diego in 1916, Smith won the Aero Club of America's Medal of Merit by setting three altitude records, flying a Martin S seaplane reaching that aircraft's ceiling of 12,333 feet. During World War I, he formed the Floyd Smith Aerial Equipment Company in San Diego, California. In May 1920, he won a patent for the first back pack, free fall type, ripcord operated parachute, designed in response to his wife Hilder Florentina Smith's near fatal static line jump in 1914. Smith's original ripcord parachute is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Dayton, Ohio.
Smith was born in Geneseo, Illinois, on 17 October 1884, his family then moved to Union, Oregon. Floyd was a cowboy, machinist, orange grower, sugar factory worker, and flying circus trapeze artist with the Flying Sylvesters. On 11 May 1907 he married his Flying Sylvesters daredevil co-star Hilder Florentina Youngberg of Galesburg, Illinois.
They had two sons Sylvester Smith (1908-1919) and Prevost Vedrines Smith (1913–1991) aka Prevost Floyd Smith. In 1919 at age 11, Sylvester was tragically killed by a car in Chicago.
With the help of Hilder and Frank Shaw, Floyd built his own airplane and soloed it 1 Jun 1912. After the Sylvesters, in 1915, Floyd Smith worked for Glenn L. Martin Company as a mechanic and test pilot. He then started the Floyd Smith Aerial Equipment Company as its founder. Recruited for the US Army parachute design team at McCook Field, Smith entered his own design into the Army's best parachute competition enlisting a dress making company, the Mitchell Brothers of Chicago, to manufacture test chutes. In the 1920s working with Switlik Parachute Company of Trenton, New Jersey, he designed a new rip cord and parachute pack with improved function and cost(U.
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