"The City of Paris has it as its duty to remind the world that it was a Frenchman who was first to parachute," declared the mayor, Jean Tiberi, a month or so ago. He had in mind that today, October 22nd, would be the bicentenary of that event, and announced an impressive ordre du jour of celebration.
Seventy-six parachutists, it seems, will descend on to the Champ de Mars; model parachutes built by Paris schoolchildren will float downwards from the Eiffel Tower; and the French Senate will host a symposium on the history of the parachute in sport, for emergency aid and military purposes.
As long ago as 1495 Leonardo da Vinci produced a sketch of a person floating in the sky and wearing what seemed to be a kind of parachute. Then in 1617 one Fauste Veranzio of Venice described a "pavilion of cloth with ropes at each corner", and went on to say that "with such an instrument a man may jump from a high tower, alighting gently on the ground". But it was to be another 180 years before such a device was used effectively.
In October 1797 Andre-Jacques Garnerin was arrested as a swindler, because he charged the spectators watching his balloon ascents and some of his balloons refused to fly. But the police released him under bond, either to perform a promised jump from a balloon or go to jail, and he had therefore at least two incentives to succeed.
On the appointed day, October 22nd, Citizen Garnerin arrived at the place of take-off, Parc Monceau, and rose rapidly in his balloon to 700 metres. There the balloon exploded, and his descent commenced somewhat earlier than he intended.
He was perched in a small gondola, rather like that which had been attached to the balloon itself, and this in turn was suspended by strings from a flimsy canopy made of tapered strips of thin materi.
One onlooker compared the canopy to a zucchetto, the little purple skullcap worn by a bishop under his biretta, adding: "And then the machine made quite enormous oscillations; the air, gathering and compressed under it, would sometimes escape by one side, sometimes by the other, thus shaking and whirling the parachute about with a violence which, however great, had happily no unfortunate effect."
And so, down to Earth, came Andre-Jacques, and he survived to make many more spectacular descents. Finally, in August 1823 he received a blow from the wooden rigging as he was preparing his balloon for takeoff, a contretemps, alas, that proved to be le commencement de la fin for M Garnerin.