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—— ON THIS DAY ——
OCTOBER 22, 1797
Paris, France
229 years ago
Andre-Jacques Garnerin, the French balloonist who on October 22, 1797, became the first person to descend by parachute from a high altitude, dropping from a hydrogen balloon above Paris.
Late in the afternoon of October 22, 1797, a crowd gathered in the Parc Monceau in Paris to watch a man they fully expected to die. Andre-Jacques Garnerin, twenty-eight years old, climbed into a small basket suspended beneath a folded canopy of white silk, which was in turn attached to a hydrogen balloon. The balloon rose to about three thousand feet. Then Garnerin cut the rope that tied him to it.
The balloon shot upward and burst. The basket dropped, the silk canopy, about twenty-three feet across, snapped open, and the fall slowed. What followed was far from graceful. The parachute had no vent at the top, so trapped air spilled out first on one side and then the other, swinging the basket in wild arcs. Garnerin came down in a field not far from the park, was thrown out on landing, and emerged unhurt but thoroughly nauseated. He mounted a horse and rode back to the park to receive the cheers.
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The parachute, a device sketched by Renaissance engineers, named by a Frenchman in the 1780s, and first proven from a great height by Garnerin in 1797.
The idea was old. Leonardo da Vinci had drawn a pyramid-shaped linen parachute around 1485 and noted that a man could use it to jump from any height without injury. In 1783, the year the Montgolfier brothers launched the first balloons, another Frenchman, Louis-Sebastien Lenormand, jumped from the tower of the Montpellier observatory under a rigid, umbrella-like frame and coined the word parachute, meaning roughly a guard against falling. But a jump from a tower is measured in seconds. No one had tried from the heights that balloons could now reach.
Garnerin had studied under the balloon pioneer Jacques Charles and served the French revolutionary army as a military balloonist. Captured during the revolutionary wars, he spent about three years as a prisoner, much of the time in a fortress in Hungary, and by his own account passed the time working out how a parachute might let a man escape from a high wall. His design did away with the rigid frame. It was folded silk, like a closed umbrella, that opened by the force of the air alone. That made it light enough to carry aloft, and it is the ancestor of every parachute since.
The astronomer Jerome Lalande, who watched the first descent, suggested cutting a hole in the top of the canopy to let air escape steadily, which cured the violent swinging. Garnerin became a celebrity and was named Official Aeronaut of France. He toured Europe giving exhibitions, and in 1802 he jumped from eight thousand feet over London. The business was a family one. His wife, Jeanne-Genevieve Labrosse, became the first woman to descend by parachute in 1799, and his niece Elisa made dozens of jumps. Garnerin died in 1823, not in the air but on the ground, struck by a falling beam while preparing a balloon. For a century the parachute remained a fairground thrill. Then came the airplane, and what had been a stunt began saving lives.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
Garnerin proved that a human being could fall from the sky and survive. Before his jump, the parachute was a theory and a tower stunt. After it, the principle was established, and the folding, frameless design he introduced is the basis of all modern parachutes.
The parachute became an essential safety and military technology. It has saved the lives of countless aircrew since the First World War, made airborne forces possible, and today returns astronauts and space capsules safely to Earth.
His career shows how showmanship can drive invention. Early flight was financed by ticket sales and public spectacle. Garnerin and his family improved their equipment because paying crowds wanted higher and more daring descents.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On October 22, 1797, a former prisoner of war rode a balloon three thousand feet above Paris and cut himself loose under twenty-three feet of silk. The ride down made him sick and the landing threw him from the basket. He got up, borrowed a horse, and rode back to take a bow. Every parachute since descends from that one.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
“If a man have a tent made of linen, of which the apertures have all been stopped up, he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without sustaining any injury.”
— Leonardo da Vinci, note beside his sketch of a parachute, about 1485 (abridged)
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about Andre-Jacques Garnerin, the first parachute descent over Paris, the earlier ideas of Leonardo and Lenormand, and the remarkable parachuting women of the Garnerin family?
