Inventor of a Wearable Parachute Takes a Flying Leap Off of the Eiffel Tower in 1912, and It Doesn’t End Well

In 1912, a Parisian tai­lor named Franz Reichelt took a fly­ing leap off of the Eif­fel Tow­er. And it did­n’t end well. Squea­mish read­ers, you’ve been warned.

Known today as the “Fly­ing Tai­lor,” Reichelt made a lit­tle mark on his­to­ry by design­ing a wear­able para­chute for aviators–something avi­a­tors could use dur­ing those dan­ger­ous ear­ly days of fly­ing. Ini­tial­ly, Reichelt test­ed his wear­able para­chute by strap­ping dum­mies into them, and drop­ping them from the fifth floor of his apart­ment build­ing. Lat­er, he looked for some­thing that could approx­i­mate a real flight. And nat­u­ral­ly he chose the Eif­fel Tow­er, the tallest build­ing in town. When city offi­cials agreed to let him use the mon­u­ment, they assumed that Reichelt planned to use a dum­my again. Nev­er did they imag­ine that he’d wear the para­chute him­self. The news­reel footage above cap­tures the fatal jump–the ner­vous hes­i­ta­tion at the begin­ning, the short flight, the unfor­tu­nate hole left in the ground.

It’s all a bit macabre, to be sure. And yet Reichelt was onto some­thing. Across the ocean, a suc­cess­ful para­chute jump from a plane took place in the Unit­ed States, lead­ing to a patent for a pack­able para­chute.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Hou­di­ni Escape From a Strait Jack­et, Then See How He Did It (Cir­ca 1917)

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Build­ing The Eif­fel Tow­er: Three Google Exhi­bi­tions Revis­it the Birth of the Great Parisian Mon­u­ment

Thomas Edison’s Silent Film of the “Fartiste” Who Delight­ed Crowds at Le Moulin Rouge (1900)