Rather Than a Hero, Reichelt Went Down (Hard) as a Clownish Loser
Accompanied by journalists, Franz Reichelt ascended the Eiffel Tower. Two film crews positioned themselves, one on the ground to catch the drop from the tower, and another at the tower to film the dummy being thrown. People were perplexed, however, because they saw no dummy. It gradually dawned upon them that Reichelt had not brought a dummy, but planned to test his design by jumping off the tower in person. A guard stopped him initially, but Reichelt convinced him to let him proceed. Friends and journalists also tried to talk him out of it, but to no avail.
As he climbed the stairs, Reichelt paused to give the crowd a cheery “A bientot!” He then continued on to the tower’s first deck. There, as the cameras rolled and people shouted at him to stop, he climbed on a stool placed atop a table adjacent to the guardrail, and jumped at 8:22AM. The suit was a flop, literally and figuratively. Reichelt fell about 200 feet to his death on the frozen ground below, with an impact that left a six inch crater and crushed his spine and skull. Unbeknownst to him, just two days earlier, an American had successfully parachuted 225 feet from the Statute of Liberty, with what became the standard half-spherical backpack parachute.
