After Reichelt’s death, Louis Lépine who, as the Prefect of Police (Préfet de Police), was ultimately responsible for the permission being granted, issued a statement making it clear that while the police routinely gave permission for experiments to be performed from the Eiffel Tower, it was understood in these cases that dummies would be used. There were some police officers present to maintain order, as the Parisian Prefecture of Police had given Reichelt permission to proceed. The weather was cold, with temperatures below 0 ☌ (32 ☏),and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the Champ de Mars. La Croix claimed that the suit may have weighed as little as 9 kilograms (20 lb). L’Action Française reported that Reichelt stated the surface area of the final design to be 30 square metres (320 sq ft) with a canopy height of 5 metres (16 ft), while Le Figaro judged the surface area might have reached 32 square metres (340 sq ft). Once extended, the outfit resembled “a sort of cloak fitted with a vast hood of silk” (“une sorte de manteau, muni d’un très vaste capuchon de soie”) according to Le Temps. The suit did not restrict the wearer’s movements when the parachute was packed, and Le Petit Parisien described the method of deploying the parachute as being as simple as extending the arms out to form a cross with the body. The news footage of his jump shows him modelling his invention in its folded form, which Le Gaulois described as “… only a little more voluminous than ordinary clothing …” (“… un peu plus volumineuse qu’un vêtement ordinaire …”). He was already wearing his parachute suit. On Sunday, 4 February, at 7:00 a.m., he arrived at the tower by car with two friends. Reichelt announced to the press in early February 1912 that he had finally received permission and would shortly conduct an experiment from the Eiffel Tower to prove the value of his invention. The next day, newspapers were full of illustrated stories about the death of the “reckless inventor”, and the jump was shown in newsreels. The parachute failed to deploy and he fell 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. Do you know what it’s like to be outside?Īll you have to do is smile to cause a landslideĪustrian-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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |