Franz Reichelt
Encyclopedia
Franz Reichelt, also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt (1879 – February 4, 1912), was an Austrian-born French tailor
, inventor and parachuting
pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for his accidental death by jumping from the Eiffel Tower
while testing a wearable parachute of his own design. 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. 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.
Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police
for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4 he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. Although it was clear that the fall had killed him, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was officially pronounced dead. The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump – many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt's experiment – and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels.
in 1879 and moved to Paris
in 1898. He obtained French nationality in 1909, adopting the first name François (the French equivalent of the Germanic "Franz"). 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. Reichelt himself was unmarried. He took an apartment on the third floor at 8 rue Gaillon near the Avenue de Opera
from 1907 (which he rented for 1500 francs a year) and opened what was to become a successful dressmaking business, catering mostly to Austrians on trips to Paris. From July 1910, he 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.
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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. Early parachuting successes, such as those by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand
in 1783 and by balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard
, had used fixed-canopy parachutes (that were already "open" before the jump began), and although André-Jacques Garnerin
had invented a frameless parachute suitable for use from high altitudes, by 1910 a parachuting solution that was suitable for use when jumping from a plane or at low altitude had yet to be developed. Reichelt seems to have become interested in parachute design after hearing some of the stories of fatal accidents among the early aeronauts and aviators. His early tests with dummies equipped with foldable silk "wings" were a resounding success: dropped from the fifth floor, they touched down lightly. Attempts to convert the initial prototype parachutes into a workable suit proved difficult. Reichelt's original design weighed around 70 kilograms (154.3 lb) and used 6 square metre of material. He presented his design to the leading aeronautic organization, La Ligue Aérienne at the Aéro-Club de France
, hoping that they would test it, but they rejected his designs on the grounds that the construction of the canopy was too weak, and they attempted to dissuade him from wasting his time on further development. Undaunted by the rejection, Reichelt persevered and conducted experimental drops with dummies from the courtyard of his building at rue Gaillon. None of his tests proved successful.
In 1911, Colonel Lalance wrote to the Aéro-Club de France, offering a prize of 10,000 francs for a safety parachute for aviators – double the prize he had offered the year before. The competition was open for three years and stipulated that the parachute must weigh no more than 25 kilograms (55.1 lb). Eager to participate, Reichelt refined his design, reducing the weight while increasing the surface area of the material until it reached 12 square metre. Further tests proved no more successful than his earlier attempts: his dummies invariably fell heavily to earth. L'Ouest-Éclair reported that in 1911 he had then made a jump himself from a height of 8 to 10 m (26.2 to 32.8 ) at Joinville
. The attempt failed but his fall was cushioned by a pile of straw, which helped him escape injury. Le Matin
reported an attempt at Nogent
from a height of 8 metres (26.2 ft) that resulted in a broken leg. Le Petit Journal
suggested that he also made at least two apparently inconclusive tests with dummies from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower
during 1911, but an interview with one of Reichelt's friends in La Presse made it clear that he had been unsuccessfully applying for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower for over a year before he finally received the authorization for the final jump. There had been other tests from the tower during 1910 and 1911 though; Gaston Hervieu, who employed a dummy aircraft and mannequins in his experiments, was attempting to perfect a parachute design to ensure the safe landing of a pilot with all or part of a damaged aircraft. Reichelt attributed the failures of his designs at least in part to the short drop distances over which he had conducted his tests, so he was keen to receive permission to experiment from the Eiffel Tower.
On Sunday, February 4, at 7 am, he arrived at the tower by car with two friends. He was already wearing his parachute suit. 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 ..." . 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. Once extended, the outfit resembled "a sort of cloak fitted with a vast hood of silk" according to Le Temps
. L'Action Française reported that Reichelt stated the surface area of the final design to be 30 square metre with a canopy height of 5 metres (16.4 ft), while Le Figaro
judged the surface area might have reached 32 square metre. La Croix
claimed that the suit may have weighed as little as 9 kilograms (19.8 lb). The weather was cold, with temperatures below 0 °C (32 °F),L'Action Française recorded the temperature as -7 C at 7 am. and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the Champ de Mars.
There were some police officers present to maintain order, as the Parisian Prefecture of Police
had given Reichelt permission to proceed. After Reichelt's death, M. Louis Lépine
who, as the Prefect of 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. They had given permission in Reichelt's case only on the basis that he would be conducting dummy drops, and that under no circumstances would they have allowed him to proceed if they had known he would be making the jump himself. M. Lépine assured La Croix that he had never signed an order that allowed a live jump. From his arrival at the tower, however, Reichelt made it clear that he intended to jump himself. According to a later interview with one of the friends who accompanied him up the tower, this was a surprise to everybody, as Reichelt had concealed his intention until the last moment. His friends tried to persuade him to use dummies in the experiment, assuring him that he would have other opportunities to make the jump himself. When this failed to make an impression on him, they pointed to the strength of the wind and said he should call off the test on safety grounds, or at least delay until the wind dropped. They were unable to shake his resolve; seemingly undeterred by the failure of his previous tests, he told journalists from Le Petit Journal that he was totally convinced that his apparatus would work, and work well. When questioned as to whether he planned to take any additional precautions, such as using a safety rope, he replied that he would not, since he intended to trust his life entirely to his parachute:
M. Hervieu, who was present to witness the demonstration, also attempted to dissuade him from making the jump. He was concerned that the parachute needed longer to fully open than the few seconds the drop from the first platform would allow, and he also presented other technical objections to which Reichelt could not provide a satisfactory response. Reichelt finally replied that:
Ropes had been suspended between the legs of the tower by the police at Reichelt's request to prevent the crowds from spilling onto the landing zone, and he spent some time discussing the arrangements with the marshals and ensuring that there was sufficient space for his landing before going to the stairs to climb to the first platform.
According to Le Petit Parisien, Reichelt's initial attempt to ascend to the first stage of the tower was blocked by a guard, M. Gassion, who had witnessed previous unsuccessful dummy drops and feared that Reichelt's attempt would end in disaster, though Le Figaro reported that he had merely not received a copy of the order and had to wait for telephone confirmation from his superiors. Despite the guard's resistance, by 8 o'clock the matter had been resolved: Reichelt, who was visibly shaken by his argument with the guard, was allowed to mount the tower with his two friends and a cinematographer
(another was stationed near the foot of the tower to record the jump from below). As he climbed the stairs he paused, turned back to the crowd, raised his hand and wished them a cheery "". His friends continued to try to talk him out of the jump, but Reichelt was quite determined. At 8:22 am, observed by a crowd of about thirty journalists and curious onlookers, he readied himself – facing towards the Seine – on a stool placed on a restaurant table next to the interior guardrail of the tower's first deck, a little more than 57 metres (187 ft) above the ground. After adjusting his apparatus with the assistance of his friends and checking the wind direction by throwing a piece of paper taken from a small book, he placed one foot on the guardrail, hesitated for about forty seconds, then leapt outwards. According to Le Figaro, he was calm and smiling just before he jumped. His parachute, which had seemed to be only half-open, folded around him almost immediately and he plummeted for a few seconds before crashing into the frozen soil at the foot of the tower. His canopy appeared to billow out at the last moment, but by that time it was too late for it to deploy fully or to break his fall.
Le Petit Parisien reported that his right leg and arm were crushed, his skull and spine broken, and that he was bleeding from his mouth, nose and ears. Le Figaro noted that his eyes were wide open, dilated with terror. He was already dead by the time the onlookers rushed to his body, but he was taken to the Necker hospital
where he was officially pronounced dead, and then on to a police station in the rue Amelie before being returned to his home in rue Gaillon.Édouard Launet, writing in the Summer supplement of Libération
in 2009, mentioned that an autopsy concluded that Reichelt had died of a heart attack during his fall.
, Le Matin and La Croix,The Catholic newspaper La Croix did not publish a Monday edition, but reported the story on the front page of the Tuesday edition. showed images of the fatal jump. Film of the attempt, including footage of Reichelt's body being removed and the onlookers measuring the depth of the hole created by his impact (15 centimetres; 5.9 in), was distributed by news organizations. Initial reports speculated on Reichelt's state of mind: none assumed he had been suicidal, but many called him reckless or foolish. A journalist in Le Gaulois suggested that only half the term "mad genius" applied to Reichelt – although the same report included an interview with one of Reichelt's friends, who claimed that the tailor had felt pressured into giving a dramatic demonstration to attract sponsors, without whom he could not expect to make a profit before any patent expired. Reichelt's death was the first to result from a parachuting accident since Charles Leroux died giving a demonstration in Tallinn
in 1889. In fact, on February 2, 1912 – two days prior to Reichelt's fatal jump – an American steeplejack, Frederick R. Law, had successfully parachuted from the viewing platform of the torch of the Statue of Liberty
(223 feet (68 m) above sea level and 151 feet (46 m) from the base of the statue), seemingly on a whim. On February 6, La Croix added a footnote to the report on Reichelt's death: another parachuting experiment was to take place on February 18 or 25 at Juvisy-sur-Orge
, in which the aviator Camille Guillaume planned to leap from his Blériot
monoplane at a height of 300 metres (984.3 ft) to test a parachute design (the plane would be allowed to crash).
After Reichelt's death, the authorities were wary of granting permission for experiments from the Eiffel Tower. Though they continued to grant permissions for parachute dummy drops, some hopeful inventors – such as M. Damblanc, who wished to try his "helicopter parachute" from the second platform – were refused permission to conduct tests, and even applications for aviation experiments not involving the tower came under renewed scrutiny. More recently, the tower has been the scene of a number of illicit base jump
s (a Norwegian man died in 2005 after losing his canopy while attempting a promotional jump for a clothing firm – the first parachuting death at the tower since Reichelt), as well as a sanctioned stunt jump for the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill
.
Reichelt came momentarily to prominence again in the 1940s in the United States, when his likeness was claimed as the model for one of the figures that were "strangely un-American in expression and garb" in the WPA
-funded mural at Floyd Bennett Field
in Brooklyn. In an incident reminiscent of the 1933 controversy over Diego Rivera
's Man at the Crossroads
mural at the Rockefeller Center
in New York City, a furore erupted over an image depicting two minor leftist
aviators, supposedly flanking a central portrait of Joseph Stalin
. The WPA already had an unwanted reputation as sympathetic to the left, and despite the artist August Henkel's "glib" explanation of the "accidental" inclusion of a Soviet red star
and his claim that the image identified as Stalin was actually of Reichelt, the murals were taken down and three of the four panels burned. The story of Reichelt's misadventure was also the subject of a 1993 French short, , written and directed by Pablo Lopez Paredes and starring Bruce Myers in the title role.
Although there were no viable parachuting solutions for use in aeroplanes when Reichelt began developing his suit, by the time of his death a successful parachute jump from a plane using a non-fixed canopy had already taken place in the United States, and a patent for a packable parachute had been applied for by Gleb Kotelnikov
.Kotelnikov was granted a patent in France in March 1912. As a parachuting pioneer, Reichelt is largely forgotten; his legacy has taken the form of a cautionary tale: while he may appear as a footnote in parachuting histories, he is a mainstay of books and websites that cite pointless or stupid deaths.
Tailor
A tailor is a person who makes, repairs, or alters clothing professionally, especially suits and men's clothing.Although the term dates to the thirteenth century, tailor took on its modern sense in the late eighteenth century, and now refers to makers of men's and women's suits, coats, trousers,...
, inventor and parachuting
Parachuting
Parachuting, also known as skydiving, is the action of exiting an aircraft and returning to earth with the aid of a parachute. It may or may not involve a certain amount of free-fall, a time during which the parachute has not been deployed and the body gradually accelerates to terminal...
pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for his accidental death by jumping from the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
while testing a wearable parachute of his own design. 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. 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.
Believing that the lack of a suitably high test platform was partially to blame for his failures, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police
Prefecture of Police
The Prefecture of Police , headed by the Prefect of Police , is an agency of the Government of France which provides the police force for the city of Paris and the surrounding three suburban départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne...
for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He was finally granted permission in early 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on February 4 he made it clear that he intended to jump himself rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Despite attempts by his friends and spectators to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he crashed into the icy ground at the foot of the tower. Although it was clear that the fall had killed him, he was taken to a nearby hospital where he was officially pronounced dead. The next day, newspapers were full of the story of the reckless inventor and his fatal jump – many included pictures of the fall taken by press photographers who had gathered to witness Reichelt's experiment – and a film documenting the jump appeared in newsreels.
Early experiments
Reichelt was born in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
in 1879 and moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1898. He obtained French nationality in 1909, adopting the first name François (the French equivalent of the Germanic "Franz"). 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. Reichelt himself was unmarried. He took an apartment on the third floor at 8 rue Gaillon near the Avenue de Opera
Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...
from 1907 (which he rented for 1500 francs a year) and opened what was to become a successful dressmaking business, catering mostly to Austrians on trips to Paris. From July 1910, he 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.
Louis-Sébastien Lenormand
Louis-Sébastien Lenormand was a French physicist, inventor and pioneer in parachuting. He is considered the first human to make a witnessed descent with a parachute and is also credited with coining the term parachute...
in 1783 and by balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard
Jean-Pierre Blanchard
Jean-Pierre Blanchard , aka Jean Pierre François Blanchard, was a French inventor, most remembered as a pioneer in aviation and ballooning....
, had used fixed-canopy parachutes (that were already "open" before the jump began), and although André-Jacques Garnerin
André-Jacques Garnerin
André-Jacques Garnerin was the inventor of the frameless parachute. He was born in Paris.His early experiments were based on umbrella-shaped devices...
had invented a frameless parachute suitable for use from high altitudes, by 1910 a parachuting solution that was suitable for use when jumping from a plane or at low altitude had yet to be developed. Reichelt seems to have become interested in parachute design after hearing some of the stories of fatal accidents among the early aeronauts and aviators. His early tests with dummies equipped with foldable silk "wings" were a resounding success: dropped from the fifth floor, they touched down lightly. Attempts to convert the initial prototype parachutes into a workable suit proved difficult. Reichelt's original design weighed around 70 kilograms (154.3 lb) and used 6 square metre of material. He presented his design to the leading aeronautic organization, La Ligue Aérienne at the Aéro-Club de France
Aéro-Club de France
The Aéro-Club de France was founded as the Aéro-Club on 20 October 1898 as a society 'to encourage aerial locomotion' by Ernest Archdeacon, Léon Serpollet, Henri de la Valette, Jules Verne and his wife, André Michelin, Albert de Dion, Alberto Santos-Dumont, Henry Deutsch de la Meurthe, and Henry de...
, hoping that they would test it, but they rejected his designs on the grounds that the construction of the canopy was too weak, and they attempted to dissuade him from wasting his time on further development. Undaunted by the rejection, Reichelt persevered and conducted experimental drops with dummies from the courtyard of his building at rue Gaillon. None of his tests proved successful.
In 1911, Colonel Lalance wrote to the Aéro-Club de France, offering a prize of 10,000 francs for a safety parachute for aviators – double the prize he had offered the year before. The competition was open for three years and stipulated that the parachute must weigh no more than 25 kilograms (55.1 lb). Eager to participate, Reichelt refined his design, reducing the weight while increasing the surface area of the material until it reached 12 square metre. Further tests proved no more successful than his earlier attempts: his dummies invariably fell heavily to earth. L'Ouest-Éclair reported that in 1911 he had then made a jump himself from a height of 8 to 10 m (26.2 to 32.8 ) at Joinville
Joinville, Haute-Marne
Joinville is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France.Its medieval château-fort, which gave to members of the House of Guise their title, duc de Joinville, was demolished during the Revolution of 1789, but the 16th-century Château du Grand Jardin built by Claude de Lorraine,...
. The attempt failed but his fall was cushioned by a pile of straw, which helped him escape injury. Le Matin
Le Matin (France)
Le Matin was a French daily newspaper created in 1883 and discontinued in 1944.Le Matin was launched on the initiative of Chamberlain & Co, a group of American financiers, in 1883, on the model of the British daily The Morning News. The direction of the project was entrusted to the French...
reported an attempt at Nogent
Nogent, Haute-Marne
Nogent is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France....
from a height of 8 metres (26.2 ft) that resulted in a broken leg. Le Petit Journal
Le Petit Journal
Le Petit Journal was a daily Parisian newspaper published from 1863 to 1944. It was founded by Moïse Polydore Millaud. In its columns were published several serial novels of Émile Gaboriau and of Ponson du Terrail.- Publishing :...
suggested that he also made at least two apparently inconclusive tests with dummies from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
during 1911, but an interview with one of Reichelt's friends in La Presse made it clear that he had been unsuccessfully applying for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower for over a year before he finally received the authorization for the final jump. There had been other tests from the tower during 1910 and 1911 though; Gaston Hervieu, who employed a dummy aircraft and mannequins in his experiments, was attempting to perfect a parachute design to ensure the safe landing of a pilot with all or part of a damaged aircraft. Reichelt attributed the failures of his designs at least in part to the short drop distances over which he had conducted his tests, so he was keen to receive permission to experiment from the Eiffel Tower.
Eiffel Tower jump
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.On Sunday, February 4, at 7 am, he arrived at the tower by car with two friends. He was already wearing his parachute suit. The news footage of his jump shows him modelling his invention in its folded form, which Le Gaulois
Le Gaulois
Le Gaulois was a French daily newspaper, founded in 1868 by Edmond Tarbe and Henri de Pene. After a printing stoppage, it was revived by Arthur Meyer in 1882 with notable collaborators Paul Bourget, Alfred Grévin, Abel Hermant, and Ernest Daudet...
described as "... only a little more voluminous than ordinary clothing ..." . The suit did not restrict the wearer's movements when the parachute was packed, and Le Petit Parisien
Le Petit Parisien
Le Petit Parisien was a prominent French newspaper during the French Third Republic. It was published between 1876 and 1944, and its circulation was over 2 million after the First World War.-Publishing:...
described the method of deploying the parachute as being as simple as extending the arms out to form a cross with the body. Once extended, the outfit resembled "a sort of cloak fitted with a vast hood of silk" according to Le Temps
Le Temps (Paris)
Le Temps was one of Paris's most important daily newspapers from April 25, 1861 to November 30, 1942.Founded in 1861 by Edmund Chojecki and Auguste Nefftzer, Le Temps was under Nefftzer's direction for ten years, when Adrien Hébrard took his place...
. L'Action Française reported that Reichelt stated the surface area of the final design to be 30 square metre with a canopy height of 5 metres (16.4 ft), while Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
judged the surface area might have reached 32 square metre. La Croix
La Croix
La Croix is a daily French general-interest Roman Catholic newspaper. It is published in Paris and distributed throughout the country, with a circulation of just under 110,000 as of 2009...
claimed that the suit may have weighed as little as 9 kilograms (19.8 lb). The weather was cold, with temperatures below 0 °C (32 °F),L'Action Française recorded the temperature as -7 C at 7 am. and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the Champ de Mars.
There were some police officers present to maintain order, as the Parisian Prefecture of Police
Prefecture of Police
The Prefecture of Police , headed by the Prefect of Police , is an agency of the Government of France which provides the police force for the city of Paris and the surrounding three suburban départements of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, and Val-de-Marne...
had given Reichelt permission to proceed. After Reichelt's death, M. Louis Lépine
Louis Lépine
Louis Jean-Baptiste Lépine was an eminent lawyer, politician and inventor who was Prefect of Police for Paris from 1893 to 1897 and again from 1899 to 1913. He earned the nickname of ‘’The Little Man with the Big Stick’’ for his skill in handling large Parisian crowds. He was responsible for the...
who, as the Prefect of 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. They had given permission in Reichelt's case only on the basis that he would be conducting dummy drops, and that under no circumstances would they have allowed him to proceed if they had known he would be making the jump himself. M. Lépine assured La Croix that he had never signed an order that allowed a live jump. From his arrival at the tower, however, Reichelt made it clear that he intended to jump himself. According to a later interview with one of the friends who accompanied him up the tower, this was a surprise to everybody, as Reichelt had concealed his intention until the last moment. His friends tried to persuade him to use dummies in the experiment, assuring him that he would have other opportunities to make the jump himself. When this failed to make an impression on him, they pointed to the strength of the wind and said he should call off the test on safety grounds, or at least delay until the wind dropped. They were unable to shake his resolve; seemingly undeterred by the failure of his previous tests, he told journalists from Le Petit Journal that he was totally convinced that his apparatus would work, and work well. When questioned as to whether he planned to take any additional precautions, such as using a safety rope, he replied that he would not, since he intended to trust his life entirely to his parachute:
M. Hervieu, who was present to witness the demonstration, also attempted to dissuade him from making the jump. He was concerned that the parachute needed longer to fully open than the few seconds the drop from the first platform would allow, and he also presented other technical objections to which Reichelt could not provide a satisfactory response. Reichelt finally replied that:
Ropes had been suspended between the legs of the tower by the police at Reichelt's request to prevent the crowds from spilling onto the landing zone, and he spent some time discussing the arrangements with the marshals and ensuring that there was sufficient space for his landing before going to the stairs to climb to the first platform.
According to Le Petit Parisien, Reichelt's initial attempt to ascend to the first stage of the tower was blocked by a guard, M. Gassion, who had witnessed previous unsuccessful dummy drops and feared that Reichelt's attempt would end in disaster, though Le Figaro reported that he had merely not received a copy of the order and had to wait for telephone confirmation from his superiors. Despite the guard's resistance, by 8 o'clock the matter had been resolved: Reichelt, who was visibly shaken by his argument with the guard, was allowed to mount the tower with his two friends and a cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
(another was stationed near the foot of the tower to record the jump from below). As he climbed the stairs he paused, turned back to the crowd, raised his hand and wished them a cheery "". His friends continued to try to talk him out of the jump, but Reichelt was quite determined. At 8:22 am, observed by a crowd of about thirty journalists and curious onlookers, he readied himself – facing towards the Seine – on a stool placed on a restaurant table next to the interior guardrail of the tower's first deck, a little more than 57 metres (187 ft) above the ground. After adjusting his apparatus with the assistance of his friends and checking the wind direction by throwing a piece of paper taken from a small book, he placed one foot on the guardrail, hesitated for about forty seconds, then leapt outwards. According to Le Figaro, he was calm and smiling just before he jumped. His parachute, which had seemed to be only half-open, folded around him almost immediately and he plummeted for a few seconds before crashing into the frozen soil at the foot of the tower. His canopy appeared to billow out at the last moment, but by that time it was too late for it to deploy fully or to break his fall.
Le Petit Parisien reported that his right leg and arm were crushed, his skull and spine broken, and that he was bleeding from his mouth, nose and ears. Le Figaro noted that his eyes were wide open, dilated with terror. He was already dead by the time the onlookers rushed to his body, but he was taken to the Necker hospital
Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital
The Hôpital Necker – Enfants Malades is a French teaching hospital, located in Paris, France. It is an hospital of the Assistance publique - Hôpitaux de Paris group, and is affiliated to the University of Paris Descartes...
where he was officially pronounced dead, and then on to a police station in the rue Amelie before being returned to his home in rue Gaillon.Édouard Launet, writing in the Summer supplement of Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
in 2009, mentioned that an autopsy concluded that Reichelt had died of a heart attack during his fall.
Aftermath
The next day's newspapers were full of the story of Reichelt's "tragic experiment" complete with photographs; at least four newspapers, Le Petit Parisien, L'HumanitéL'Humanité
L'Humanité , formerly the daily newspaper linked to the French Communist Party , was founded in 1904 by Jean Jaurès, a leader of the French Section of the Workers' International...
, Le Matin and La Croix,The Catholic newspaper La Croix did not publish a Monday edition, but reported the story on the front page of the Tuesday edition. showed images of the fatal jump. Film of the attempt, including footage of Reichelt's body being removed and the onlookers measuring the depth of the hole created by his impact (15 centimetres; 5.9 in), was distributed by news organizations. Initial reports speculated on Reichelt's state of mind: none assumed he had been suicidal, but many called him reckless or foolish. A journalist in Le Gaulois suggested that only half the term "mad genius" applied to Reichelt – although the same report included an interview with one of Reichelt's friends, who claimed that the tailor had felt pressured into giving a dramatic demonstration to attract sponsors, without whom he could not expect to make a profit before any patent expired. Reichelt's death was the first to result from a parachuting accident since Charles Leroux died giving a demonstration in Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
in 1889. In fact, on February 2, 1912 – two days prior to Reichelt's fatal jump – an American steeplejack, Frederick R. Law, had successfully parachuted from the viewing platform of the torch of the Statue of Liberty
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
(223 feet (68 m) above sea level and 151 feet (46 m) from the base of the statue), seemingly on a whim. On February 6, La Croix added a footnote to the report on Reichelt's death: another parachuting experiment was to take place on February 18 or 25 at Juvisy-sur-Orge
Juvisy-sur-Orge
Juvisy-sur-Orge is a commune in the Essonne department in Île-de-France in northern France.Inhabitants of Juvisy-sur-Orge are known as Juvisiens.-Geography:Neighboring communes:* Athis-Mons* Draveil* Savigny-sur-Orge* Viry-Châtillon...
, in which the aviator Camille Guillaume planned to leap from his Blériot
Blériot Aéronautique
Blériot Aéronautique was a French aircraft manufacturer founded by Louis Blériot. It also made a few cyclecars from 1921 to 1922.After Louis Blériot became famous for being the first to fly over the English Channel in 1909, he established an aircraft manufacturing company. This company really took...
monoplane at a height of 300 metres (984.3 ft) to test a parachute design (the plane would be allowed to crash).
After Reichelt's death, the authorities were wary of granting permission for experiments from the Eiffel Tower. Though they continued to grant permissions for parachute dummy drops, some hopeful inventors – such as M. Damblanc, who wished to try his "helicopter parachute" from the second platform – were refused permission to conduct tests, and even applications for aviation experiments not involving the tower came under renewed scrutiny. More recently, the tower has been the scene of a number of illicit base jump
BASE jumping
BASE jumping, also sometimes written as B.A.S.E jumping, is an activity that employs an initially packed parachute to jump from fixed objects...
s (a Norwegian man died in 2005 after losing his canopy while attempting a promotional jump for a clothing firm – the first parachuting death at the tower since Reichelt), as well as a sanctioned stunt jump for the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill
A View to a Kill
A View to a Kill is the fourteenth spy film of the James Bond series, and the seventh and last to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Although the title is adapted from Ian Fleming's short story "From a View to a Kill", the film is the fourth Bond film after The Spy Who Loved...
.
Reichelt came momentarily to prominence again in the 1940s in the United States, when his likeness was claimed as the model for one of the figures that were "strangely un-American in expression and garb" in the WPA
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
-funded mural at Floyd Bennett Field
Floyd Bennett Field
Floyd Bennett Field is New York City's first municipal airport. While no longer used as an operational commercial, military or general aviation airfield, the New York Police Department still flies its helicopters from its heliport base there...
in Brooklyn. In an incident reminiscent of the 1933 controversy over Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
's Man at the Crossroads
Man at the Crossroads
Man at the Crossroads was a mural by Diego Rivera.The Rockefellers wanted to have a mural put on the ground-floor wall of Rockefeller Center. Nelson Rockefeller wanted Henri Matisse or Pablo Picasso to do it because he favored their modern style, but neither was available...
mural at the Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National...
in New York City, a furore erupted over an image depicting two minor leftist
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
aviators, supposedly flanking a central portrait of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. The WPA already had an unwanted reputation as sympathetic to the left, and despite the artist August Henkel's "glib" explanation of the "accidental" inclusion of a Soviet red star
Red star
A red star, five-pointed and filled, is an important ideological and religious symbol which has been used for various purposes, such as: state emblems, flags, monuments, ornaments, and logos.- Symbol of communism :...
and his claim that the image identified as Stalin was actually of Reichelt, the murals were taken down and three of the four panels burned. The story of Reichelt's misadventure was also the subject of a 1993 French short, , written and directed by Pablo Lopez Paredes and starring Bruce Myers in the title role.
Although there were no viable parachuting solutions for use in aeroplanes when Reichelt began developing his suit, by the time of his death a successful parachute jump from a plane using a non-fixed canopy had already taken place in the United States, and a patent for a packable parachute had been applied for by Gleb Kotelnikov
Gleb Kotelnikov
Gleb Yevgeniyevich Kotelnikov , was the Russian-Soviet inventor of the knapsack parachute , and braking parachute....
.Kotelnikov was granted a patent in France in March 1912. As a parachuting pioneer, Reichelt is largely forgotten; his legacy has taken the form of a cautionary tale: while he may appear as a footnote in parachuting histories, he is a mainstay of books and websites that cite pointless or stupid deaths.