OISTER, Anton
(OJSTER)
* 18. 1. 1867, Maribor, Slovenia
† 31. 8. 1944, Ljubljana, Slovenia
inventor (parachute)
O. was trained as an upholsterer, yet worked at the railways as a guard. He had to leave this post in 1907, due to an injury from a severe fall off a train. He was once again employed as an upholsterer, and began making safety equipment for railway, ship, and air traffic.
After the turn of the century, the focus of his research was aviation, which had begun to develop at that time. O. constructed different models of hot air balloons and zeppelins. After witnessing the fatal accident of the Czech balloon and parachute artiste, Jan Plaček, in 1903, he became more and more devoted to manufacturing a new type of safety equipment – the parachute. By using metal structures, he achieved a faster opening of the parachute. He constructed a parachute for saving ballooners, which could save four persons, with the balloon basket. In 1914, one of these rescue parachutes was successfully presented to a commission in Fischamend (Austria). Before 1914, O. registered twelve patents.
The next logical step was the development of a small parachute for aeroplane rescue, which he tested in Ljubljana with the aid of puppets. Near the end of World War I, he was given a large order by the Austro-Hungarian Army and afterwards opened a company in Ljubljana with his son Viktor, »O. in sin« (O. and Son). He thus manufactured around 500 parachutes before the end of the war.
As early as 1915, instead of a metal mechanism, he constructed a small parachute, which the user would pull out of his or her rucksack. However, since he had not patented this invention, today the American Irvin (1919) is considered the inventor of the parachute. After the war, O. developed a parachute together with his son that would lower the cabin of a damaged aeroplane with the pilot, or perhaps even the entire plane, safely to the ground. After his son left their company, O. returned to upholstery and invented an original system of shutters that roll up on their own.
