The catastrophic loss of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo in October, which killed co-pilot Michael Alsbury, was hardly the first loss of life in pursuit of the skies. Flying on the leading edge has always been a deadly proposition, and pilots and astronauts understand and accept the risks. The important thing is to learn from disasters and get better.
So Peter Siebold, the second Virgin Galactic pilot, who parachuted to safety after SpaceShipTwo disintegrated around him, owes some thanks for his survival to one of the earliest—and best-recorded—deaths in the history of aviation.
In 1912, a young Austrian man jumped off the Eiffel Tower with a crowd of reporters and onlookers watching from below. He was testing his own invention: A silk parachute suit pilots could use to safely fall to earth in case of a midair failure. It didn’t work, and he fell nearly 200 feet to an instant death.
Nicknamed The Flying Tailor, the 33-year-old Franz Riechelt (who actually was a tailor) believed he could design an outfit for early aviators that could transform into a parachute and allow them to survive a bail out at altitude. He went through various designs of his suit, throwing dummies off his apartment building in Paris’s second arrondissement with some success. However, as he continued to work on his design to reduce the weight of the suit, it became less effective. Nevertheless, he was enticed by a contest for inventors that would pay 10,000 Francs, a significant sum, for a working 55-pound parachute. (Modern skydiving parachutes weigh as little as 15 pounds.)
On February 5, 1912, after a year and a half spent developing his design, Reichelt was allowed by the Paris chief of police to test his invention from the first platform of the Eiffel Tower. Later, the chief (understandably) claimed he only gave permission for Reichelt to throw a parachute-equipped dummy off the tower, something other inventors had done previously, not to jump himself. With police holding back observers to keep the landing area clear, Reichelt made it known he would be jumping off the tower himself, ignoring his companions’ attempts to talk him out of risking his own life to test the unproven contraption, according to contemporary newspaper accounts.
After climbing on a table and waiting some 40 seconds—apparently having second thoughts—Reichelt jumped off the tower. The parachute failed completely, and he plummeted to his death, leaving a six-inch deep depression in the frozen soil. Reichelt’s death was front page news in several Parisian papers. The jump was even captured on film (the video is embedded above). Details are scarce on what, exactly, went wrong, but the prevailing theory is that the design just wasn’t that good.
Though Reichelt was blatantly unsuccessful, his design was a step on the path of development that led to modern parachutes, which allow for amazing feats. Reicholt likely didn’t imagine people would intentionally jump from working airplanes, but the parachutes that followed his make skydiving a remarkably safe extreme sport: There were only 222 skydiving fatalities in the US between 2004 and 2013, out of more than 28 million jumps, according to the United States Parachute Association. And that doesn’t count the thousands of military aviators who have lived thanks to their parachutes.
“Skydiving is as close as we’ll get to flying,” says Peter Shankman, an avid skydiver. “There’s something really amazing about being able to jump out of a plane two miles above the Earth and live.” Franz Reicholt didn’t invent the parachute that makes that possible, but his was a failure that helped lead to success.
Have a crazy invention or whopping failure you want us to cover? Email alex_davies@wired.com and jlgolson@gmail.com and we’ll check it out.
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