Garnerin jumped from a balloon on October 22, 1797. He was high above Paris, hanging from a silk canopy, and he cut loose and fell toward the crowd below. He was the first person to make a parachute descent and live to tell of it.
He was a balloonist by trade. Garnerin had been experimenting with the idea of falling safely from a height, and he built a parachute of silk that opened like an umbrella above him. The device was folded under the balloon, and when he released it, the canopy filled and slowed his fall.
The descent was rough. The parachute swung violently as it came down, and Garnerin was thrown about in his basket, and he landed in a field shaken but unhurt. The crowd that had come to watch a possible death saw a man walk away from the sky instead.
The principle was now proven. Before Garnerin, the only people who had tried to fall safely had used fixed canopies that were never really tested, and many had died. His jump showed that a man could descend by parachute and survive, and the demonstration changed the future of flight.
The parachute became essential. As heavier-than-air flight arrived a century later, the canopy Garnerin had first used was refined into the life-saving device that pilots and airmen carry today. A leap from a balloon over Paris in 1797 began the science of falling safely.