He told the crowd 'See you soon!', leapt from the Eiffel Tower in his homemade parachute suit — and plummeted 57 meters to his death. The whole thing was filmed.
Franz Reichelt was a successful Parisian tailor, not an engineer, but he became obsessed with developing a wearable parachute suit for aviators in the early days of flight. Aerial accidents were common and he believed he could solve the problem. His early tests dropping dummies from five floors looked promising.
After months of failed experiments and rejected applications, Reichelt finally obtained permission from the Paris Prefecture of Police in early 1912 to test his invention from the Eiffel Tower. The permission was granted on the assumption he would use dummies. Reichelt had other plans.
On February 4, 1912, Reichelt arrived at the Eiffel Tower at 7 AM, already wearing his suit. A crowd of journalists, cinematographers, and curious onlookers had gathered. He walked around showing off the suit — which looked 'only a little more voluminous than ordinary clothing' — then announced he would be jumping himself.
Friends, engineers, and even police officers tried to talk him out of it. Gaston Hervieu, a rival inventor who knew parachutes, explained in technical detail why the suit wouldn't work and the drop was too short for the canopy to deploy. Reichelt replied: 'You are going to see how my seventy-two kilos and my parachute will give your arguments the most decisive of denials.'
At 8:22 AM, he climbed onto a stool on a table at the tower's first platform, 57 meters above the frozen ground. He tested the wind by tossing a piece of paper. He hesitated for forty seconds. Then he jumped. The parachute folded around him immediately and he fell in a straight line. He left a 15-centimeter crater in the soil.
Two cinematographers filmed the entire jump — one from the platform, one from the ground. The footage still exists and can be watched today. Reichelt died instantly from a heart attack mid-fall, before he even hit the ground. He was 33. Two days earlier, an American had successfully parachuted from the Statue of Liberty using a proper parachute.