![]() The French press at the time noted that when onlookers saw his body, his eyes were wide open, dilated with terror. His right leg and arm were crushed, his skull and spine were broken, and he was bleeding from his mouth, nose, and ears. When a witness tried to explain to Reichelt that the parachute would not open at the short height he was jumping from, he merely replied, “You are going to see how my seventy-two kilos and my parachute will give your arguments the most decisive of denials.”Īt 8:22 a.m., Reichelt gave one last cheery “À bientôt” (See you soon) to the crowd, before jumping off the tower.Īs he jumped, his parachute folded around him, and he plummeted 187 feet to the cold ground below where he died on impact. When asked if he would use any safety measures on this experiment he said, “I want to try the experiment myself and without trickery, as I intend to prove the worth of my invention.” Jun 24, 1964, The Eiffel Tower is named a Historical Monument. Jan 3, 1956, A fire damaged the top of the tower. Es recordado por saltar a su muerte desde la Torre Eiffel mientras probaba un paracaídas portátil de su propio diseño. ![]() Jul 7, 1940, Eiffel Tower is closed for WWII. Franz Reichelt, también conocido como Frantz Reichelt y François Reichelt, fue un sastre franco-austriaco. Oct 16, 1915, Eiffel Tower is closed during WWI. Many of Reichelt’s friends, as well as a security guard working there, tried to persuade him not to make the jump himself. Feb 4, 1912, Franz Reichelt jumps off the Eiffel Tower. Just two years later, on 4 February 1912, Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt died after jumping from the first level of the tower (a height of 57 metres) to demonstrate his parachute design. ![]() Wikimedia Commons Franz Reichelt, right before his fatal experiment, 1912. The police believed that Reichelt would use test dummies to display the effectiveness of his invention, and the tailor did not reveal that he himself was planning to jump until he arrived at the tower at 7:00 a.m. ![]() After over a year of being denied, Reichelt was finally permitted to test his parachute on the tower on February 4th, 1912. To these ends, Reichelt began to lobby the Parisian Police Department to allow him to test his parachute from the first stage of the Eiffel Tower. Despite unsuccessful early tests that left him with a broken leg, Reichelt believed it was only the short heights he had tested it from that prevented the chute from working. He created what he called a “parachute-suit”: a standard flight suit adorned with a few rods, a silk canopy, and rubber lining. While all his attempts to scale down these prototypes were unsuccessful, Reichelt was undeterred. However, these prototypes were far above the weight and size that could be used on an airplane. Using his expertise as a tailor, Reichelt created prototypes with foldable silk wings that successfully slowed down dummies so they could land softly. We don't talk about it because we don't want to give people ideas.Spurred on by this prize, as well as his own creative inclination, Reichelt began to develop such a parachute. "Some years it's two or three, some years none at all. Most of those who leap from the tower are suicides, but the SNTE spokeswoman declined to say exactly how many jumped to their death. The first, an Austrian named Franz Reichelt, jumped from the first floor with a parachute of his own invention in 1912. The two "base-jumpers" - parachutists who jump from a fixed point rather than an aircraft - were being questioned, as were another two who had climbed the Eiffel tower with the jumper who later died, the police spokesman said.Ī spokeswoman for SNTE, the company that runs the tower, said security measures meant very few parachutists or hang-gliders managed to launch themselves from the monument, which opened for the 1889 World Fair. Police sources said two more Norwegians had been intercepted by private security guards earlier on Monday as they were making their way to the top of the 210-metre Montparnasse tower on the other side of Paris, apparently to prepare for a similar leap. The parachute failed to deploy and he plummeted 57 metres (187 ft) to his death. "His parachute got caught, he became detached from it, and he hit the first floor more than 50 metres below," the officer said. The spokesman said the man died at about 10pm on Monday after jumping from the tower's 115-metre high (350ft) second floor. Franz Reichelt was born on 16 October 1878 in Wegstdtl, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (today tt, Czech Republic), and moved to Paris, France, in 1898.
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