Franz Reichelt

French parachuting pioneer (1878–1912)

Franz Karl Reichelt#tag:ref|His native name is also found misspelled as "Frantz Reichelt" in French sources. also known as Henry François Reichelt French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft in mid air. Although he created and experimented with multiple prototypes of wings and parachute suits over the years, they were by and large failures, to the point that it was a point of contention between newspapers after his death whether or not any of his designs were ever functional. Believing that a suitably high test platform would prove his invention's efficacy, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Paris Police Prefecture for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. He finally received permission in 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on 4February he made it clear that he intended to jump personally rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Despite attempts to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. The parachute failed to deploy and he plummeted to his death. The next day, newspapers were full of illustrated stories about the death of the "reckless inventor", and the jump was shown in newsreels.

Franz Karl Reichelt was born on 16 October 1878 in Wegstädtl, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austria Hungary (today Štětí, Czech Republic) to Josef Reichelt and Katharina Reichelt ( Gauger). and there was a stiff breeze blowing across the Champ de Mars. showed images of the fatal jump. Film of the attempt, including footage of Reichelt's body being removed and the onlookers measuring the depth of the crater left by his impact (15 centimetres; 5.9 in In an incident reminiscent of the 1933 controversy over Diego Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural at Rockefeller Center, a furore erupted over an image depicting two minor leftist aviators, supposedly flanking a central portrait of Joseph Stalin. The WPA already had an unwanted reputation as being sympathetic to the left, and despite the artist August Henkel's "glib" explanation of the "accidental" inclusion of a Soviet red star and his claim that the image identified as Stalin was actually of Reichelt, the murals were taken down and three of the four panels burned.