Franz Reichelt

Franz Reichelt (16 October 1878 – 4 February 1912) was a tailor and inventor born in what was then Austria-Hungary, who later became a French citizen. He is often called the Flying Tailor today. He is best known for dying after jumping from the Eiffel Tower while testing a parachute he had sewn into a suit—something that resembles what we would now call a wingsuit.

Reichelt moved to Paris in 1898 and became a naturalized French citizen in 1909, changing his first name to François. He never married. He ran a successful dressmaking business from an apartment at 8 rue Gaillon, near the Avenue de l’Opéra, which he rented from 1907. His customers were mostly Austrians visiting Paris.

Starting in July 1910, Reichelt worked on a “parachute-suit” for aviators. The idea was that a pilot could wear it like ordinary clothing, and if forced to leave an aircraft mid-flight, the suit would unfold into a parachute. Early tests from the fifth floor of his building, using dummies, worked well. But later versions of the design failed. The leading aeronautics group, La Ligue Aérienne at the Aéro-Club de France, examined his prototype and told him the canopy was too weak. They urged him to stop. He kept going anyway.

In 1911, a Colonel Lalance offered a 10,000-franc prize for a safe aviator’s parachute that weighed no more than 25 kilograms. Reichelt tried to meet the requirements, reducing weight and increasing the fabric area to 12 square meters. Still, his dummy tests ended with the figures crashing to the ground. He also made at least one personal jump from about 8 to 10 meters at Joinville, landing in straw to avoid injury. Another attempt at Nogent, from 8 meters, broke his leg. Some newspapers claimed he had run dummy tests from the Eiffel Tower’s first platform in 1911, but a friend’s interview made clear that Reichelt had been trying for over a year to get official permission to use the tower.

Reichelt believed his failures came from jumping from too low a height. He wanted a much higher platform to prove his invention worked. He repeatedly asked the Paris police for permission to test from the Eiffel Tower. Finally, in early February 1912, he got the go-ahead.

When he arrived at the tower on 4 February, he announced he would jump himself, not use a dummy. Friends tried to talk him out of it. He jumped from the first platform anyway. The parachute did not open.