A BRITISH man has jumped 2120 metres in a parachute made according to a design sketched by Italian inventor Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th century, proving that the pyramid-shaped contraption works. Beeld newspaper said Adrian Nicholas launched himself from a hot air balloon drifting close to the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga province, at a height of some 3030 metres. He slowly fell more than half the distance and then, at about 900 metres, cut himself loose from the Da Vinci-designed parachute and used a modern-day version to complete his descent. “The only reason I did not use that parachute to land, was that you cannot steer it and I was worried that I might end up in a tree or something,” he said. The parachute was copied from a design drawn by Da Vinci in 1485. It was never produced as experts always doubted that it would work. Nicholas said he called in the help of Oxford University lecturer Professor Martin Kemp to decipher the drawing before having a friend make up two copies. Made of canvas, rope and six-metre-long wooden poles, the parachute weighed some 180 kilos.