History of Umbrellas Timeline

The Oxford English Dictionary records 1611 as the first recorded use of the word umbrella in this sense.

Fynes Moryson’s Itinerary, published in 1617, referred to the custom of carrying umbrellas in hot countries to avoid the sun’s rays.

The use of parasols and parapluies in France and England was adopted, probably from China, around the middle of the seventeenth century.

On 22 June 1664, John Evelyn recorded seeing rarities shown by a Roman Catholic priest, including objects sent by Jesuits from Japan and China to France.

Image source: John Evelyn

During Streynsham Master’s 1676 visit to the East India Company factory at Masulipatnam, he noted that the town governor and the next three officials alone were permitted to carry a round umbrella.

Kersey’s Dictionary of 1708 defined an umbrella as a screen commonly used by women to keep off rain.

In 1710, Paris merchant Jean Marius introduced Europe’s first lightweight folding umbrella. His shop stood near the barrier of Saint-Honoré.

The Princess Palatine purchased Jean Marius’s folding umbrella in 1712 and promoted it among her aristocratic friends, helping make it an essential fashion item for Parisiennes.

The word parapluie, meaning against the rain and derived through French and Latin roots, did not enter the dictionary of the Académie française until 1718.

Jonas Hanway is said to have carried an umbrella for thirty years before his death in 1786, placing his first use of one at about 1750.

Writing from Paris in 1752, James Wolfe remarked that umbrellas were used for protection from sun and rain there and wondered why the practice had not become established in England.

Image source: James Wolfe

In 1759, the French scientist Navarre presented the French Academy of Sciences with a new umbrella design combined with a cane.

The French royal court inventory of 1763 listed eleven taffeta parasols in different colors and three waxed-cloth parasols decorated with gold and silver lace.

A Paris magazine reported in 1768 that people commonly went out with umbrellas and endured carrying them under their arms for months, despite using them only occasionally.

In 1769, Maison Antoine at the Magasin d’Italie on rue Saint-Denis became the first Paris store to rent umbrellas to people caught in rain. The practice soon became common.

John Macdonald recalled that in 1770 he was taunted as a Frenchman and asked why he did not call a coach whenever he went out carrying an umbrella.

Metal ribs were mentioned in the Encyclopédie Méthodique at the end of the eighteenth century and were on sale in London during the 1780s, preceding later claims about steel-ribbed umbrellas.

By 1808, seven shops in Paris made and sold umbrellas. Sagnier on rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes received the first French patent for an umbrella invention.

The number of Paris shops making umbrellas grew to 42 by 1813, reflecting the product’s increasing popularity and commercial importance.

The first umbrella manufacturing company in the United States was established in 1828.

By 1848, Paris had 377 small umbrella-making shops employing approximately 1,400 workers.

Baltimore was long recognized as the umbrella capital of the United States. At the industry’s peak in 1920, seven companies in the city produced millions of umbrellas annually.

In 1835, Baron Charles Random de Berenger described several ways readers of How to Protect Life and Property could use an umbrella as an improvised weapon against highwaymen.

Samuel Fox is credited with inventing the steel-ribbed umbrella in 1852, although earlier references indicate that metal ribs had already existed in some forms.

Bumbershoot emerged as a rare and fanciful Americanism for an umbrella during the late nineteenth century.

Umbrellas have been fashioned into hats since at least 1880, with examples continuing to appear as recently as 1987.

Journalist J. F. Sullivan proposed the umbrella as a misunderstood weapon in a tongue-in-cheek article published in the Ludgate Monthly in 1897.

Between 1899 and 1902, umbrellas and walking sticks were incorporated into the self-defense repertoire of Bartitsu.

Image source: Bartitsu

An article in The Daily Mirror in January 1902 instructed women on using an umbrella or parasol to defend themselves from attackers.

The Balogh brothers invented a pocket, or foldable, umbrella in Uraiújfalu, Hungary. Their patent request was admitted in 1923 by the Royal Notary Public of Szombathely.

Pocket umbrellas associated with Hans Haupt appeared in 1928, contributing to the development of compact umbrellas for everyday carrying.

In Vienna in 1928, sculpture student Slawa Horowitz developed an improved compact folding umbrella. She received a patent for it on 19 September 1929.

The first large convertible umbrellas were fixed installations at the 1955 Federal Garden Exhibition in Kassel. Frei Otto constructed the first convertible large umbrellas for the 1971 Federal Garden Exhibition in Cologne.

Mitsuo Sudou invented transparent umbrellas, often made from plastic or composite materials, in 1958.

Transparent umbrellas became popular fashion items during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

Image source: 1964 Summer Olympics

In 1969, Bradford E. Phillips, owner of Totes Incorporated in Loveland, Ohio, obtained a patent for his working folding umbrella.

In 1978, Frei Otto built a group of ten convertible umbrellas for British rock group Pink Floyd’s American tour.

In 1978, Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was killed in London with ricin injected through a modified umbrella.

Unicode encodes two umbrella variations in its Miscellaneous Symbols block: a plain umbrella, U+2602, and an umbrella with raindrops overhead, U+2614.

In 2005, Brian Hahn, an associate professor at the University of Cape Town, was beaten to death with an umbrella by former doctoral student Maleafisha Steve Tladi.

In 2005, Dutch design student Gerwin Hoogendoorn invented an aerodynamically streamlined storm umbrella. Its design could withstand wind force 10, resist turning inside out, and protect nearby people with eye-saving features.

As of 2008, the relevant patent office had registered 3,000 active patents on umbrella-related inventions. Examples included stealth-shaped, scoop-shaped, and teardrop-shaped canopies.

As of 2008, most umbrellas worldwide were made in China, especially in the provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang.

In March 2011, media reports revealed that French president Nicolas Sarkozy used a £10,000 armor-plated umbrella for protection from attackers.

Image source: Nicolas Sarkozy

During the 2014 Hong Kong protests, often called the Umbrella Revolution, protesters used umbrellas as shields against pepper spray and tear gas deployed by riot police.

Image source: Umbrella Movement

The 2015 film Kingsman: The Secret Service features a high-tech bullet-resistant umbrella used extensively as a weapon by Harry Hart and Eggsy Unwin.

Image source: Kingsman: The Secret Service