Oh, the Humanity! - Lawnchair Larry, The French Superman, The Magnificent Montgolfiers, and the Pursuit of Human Flight!

Who doesn’t want to fly?? From ancient times, humans have looked to the Heavens and imagined what it might be like to glide among the clouds. 1000 years before the birth of Christ, the Psalmist looked in wonder to the skies and imagined flying through them, writing, “If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 9 If I fly on the wings of the dawn and settle down on the western horizon, 10 even there your hand will lead me; your right hand will hold on to me.”

But flight wouldn’t be possible for humans for another 2800 years after he pinned those words, and even then, in the early and pioneering days of human flight, it was a dodgy and dangerous business. Today we are going to trace the history of human flight in a very non-traditional way. From wingsuits to straw-powered balloons, to flying bombs and levitating lawn chairs flying as high as jet planes. This episode’s song, which you can hear in full at the end of the podcast is all about the first human-powered flight, a failed jump off of the Eiffel Tower, the Hindenburg Disaster and Lawnchair Larry’s amazing trip across the West coast floating at 16,000 feet in his lawnchair. Here’s a little preview, put together just for the InterestingPod by our friends in Dayton, Ohio, the band Four for Flying out of the Kayfabe Municipal Airport. 

Franz Reichelt was an amazing guy, and a wannabee aeronaut who should serve as a cautionary tale for those who want to fly. Reichelt was born in Austria-Hungary, and immigrated to France in 1898, where he opened a successful dressmaking business. As you might guess, Franz was unmarried, because any married man who tried to jump off of a tall tower in a homemade wingsuit would be beaten mercilessly by his sensible wife until he gave up on the idea before it happened. At least, that’s what my wife would do. In love. 

Somewhere around the summer of 1910, Reichelt began to develop what he called a "parachute-suit" which was just a little more bulky than one normally worn by an aviator, but also contained some rods, a silk canopy and a small amount of rubber that should have allowed it to fold out to become what Reichelt hoped would be a practical and efficient parachute/wingsuit outfit. The February 5, 1912 edition of the Paris Le Petit Journal suggested that Reichelt had made a couple of experimental test jumps with dummies wearing his wingsuit from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower at some point in 1911. 

L'Ouest-Éclair similarly noted that in 1911, Reichelt had personally jumped from a height of around 30 feet at Joinville; a failed attempt that didn’t lead to serious injury because of a pile of straw that he landed on.  The Le Matin newspaper reported an attempt at Nogent from a height of 8 metres (26 ft) that ended with a broken leg. 

Pretty much all of Reichelt’s later tests failed, including the Eiffel tower ones, but Reichelt insanely convinced himself that the reason for their failure was not a design problem, but because the tests took place TOO CLOSE TO THE GROUND. 

 

So logically, he decided that his suit would perform better when used on a much HIGHER jump. Yeah, that’s the ticket. 

The Tailor Who Tried to Fly: Franz Reichelt’s Leap into History (and the Ground)

On February 4, 1912, Paris awoke to an icy winter morning, a biting wind off the Seine, and the curious sight of a small Austrian-born tailor preparing to defy both gravity and common sense. Franz Reichelt, a 33-year-old single man whose moustache was as impressive and ambitious as his dreams - think Hercule Poirot here - stood at the base of the Eiffel Tower wearing his own invention: a hybrid contraption somewhere between a parachute, a wingsuit, and a very heavy set of curtains with a metal exoskeleton. I’m no engineer, but taking a look at his design, I imagine that if I wore it to jump off of my dresser onto my bed, it would hurt me worse to have it on when I landed, than not. Would Reichelt be correct, however, that his suit was made to thrive at high altitude jumps, rather than low altitude? You be the judge. 

Reichelt had a goal as noble as it was dangerous, which was to save the lives of aviators by giving them a wearable parachute they could deploy in midair. In an age when flying machines were fragile and safety regulations were more of a suggestion, this was no small contribution. Unfortunately, Reichelt also possessed a confidence so unshakable that it refused to be weighed down by things like wind resistance, aerodynamics, or prior testing from a safe height. There