Who invented the evacuation slide?
Jack Grant is the world's first inventor of inflatable aircraft escape slide & raft. The inflatable aircraft escape slide & raft was invented by Jack Grant while working for Qantas in 1965. It is now major safety equipment on all passenger airliners in the world.
An evacuation slide is an inflatable slide used to evacuate an aircraft quickly. An escape slide is required on all commercial (passenger-carrying) aircraft where the door sill height is such that, in the event of an evacuation, passengers would be unable to step down from the door uninjured (Federal Aviation Administration requires slides on all aircraft doors where the floor is 6 feet (1.8 m) or more above the ground).
If a plane crashes, there must be an exit strategy so that passengers can exit the plane. In fact, aviation authority rules state that it must be possible to completely evacuate the aircraft within ninety seconds in total darkness and where half of the aircraft's exits are blocked. That is why the inflatable escape slide plays the most important role in fulfilling this directive.
In 1965 the idea was further developed by combining the inflatable slide with an integrated raft. Previously life rafts were carried separately in the cabin and deployed manually by the crew after a water landing. The new slide/raft design was put forward to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), by Jack Grant, Qantas operations safety superintendent.
In 1965, Jack Grant, a Safety Inspector at Qantas Airlines, invented an inflatable escape slide that could double as a life raft in case a plane crashes into the sea. The designs of this invention were tried and tested with great success in Sydney, Australia. In the 1960s, aviation authorities suggested that weatherproof slides would be useful if they were fully deployed in just twenty-five seconds. Not only did the slide meet these requirements of aviation authorities, it could also fit inside the airplane door or under the emergency exit window due to its light and compact structure.
In an emergency, the slide mechanism is activated to release the inflatable escape slide and then begins to inflate. During inflation, it initially draws air from the compressed carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas cylinder. The cylinder provides approximately one-third of the volume required to inflate the spool and then sucks in ambient air directed by aspirators to fully inflate.