1/15/2024 0 Comments Old eiffel towerHis early tests were successful: dummies equipped with foldable silk "wings" touched down lightly when dropped from five floors, but converting the prototypes into a wearable "suit" proved difficult. Reichelt seems to have become interested in parachute design after hearing some of the stories of fatal accidents among the early aeronauts and aviators. Early parachuting successes, such as those of Louis-Sébastien Lenormand and Jean-Pierre Blanchard, had successfully used fixed-canopy parachutes (already "open" before the jump began), and André-Jacques Garnerin had invented a frameless parachute suitable for use from high altitudes, but by 1910 there was still no parachute suitable for use in jumping from a plane or at low altitude. The dawn of the aviation age brought inevitable accidents coupled with a growing interest in safety measures, most notably in the development of an effective parachute. Experiments Illustration of the first parachute jump by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand from the tower of the Montpellier observatory in 1783.įrom July 1910, Reichelt began to develop a " parachute-suit": a suit that was not much more bulky than one normally worn by an aviator, but with the addition of a few rods, a silk canopy and a small amount of rubber that allowed it to fold out to become what Reichelt hoped would be a practical and efficient parachute. He took an apartment on the third floor at 8 rue Gaillon near the Avenue de l' Opéra from 1907 and opened what was to become a successful dressmaking business, catering mostly to Austrians on trips to Paris. One of his sisters may have also come to France and been married to a jeweller there, but newspaper reports differed on the details of his family life, with most reporting that his sisters stayed in Vienna. He obtained French nationality in 1909, adopting the first name François (the French equivalent of the Germanic "Franz"). The next day, newspapers were full of illustrated stories about the death of the "reckless inventor", and the jump was shown in newsreels.įranz Reichelt was born on 16 October 1878 in Wegstädtl, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (today Štětí, Czech Republic), and moved to Paris, France, in 1898. The parachute failed to deploy and he plummeted 57 metres (187 ft) to his death. Despite attempts to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. He finally received permission in 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on 4 February he made it clear that he intended to jump personally rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building had been successful, but he was unable to replicate those early successes with any of his subsequent designs.īelieving that a suitably high test platform would prove his invention's efficacy, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft in mid-air. Franz Reichelt (16 October 1878 – 4 February 1912), also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt, was an Austro-Hungarian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design.
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