The first parachutist - André Jacques Grenrin parachuted from a height of almost a kilometer in a parachute he built himself - October 22, 1797

Grenrin, a student of balloon pioneer Jacques Cherel, worked on building and flying balloons and with his brother Jean-Baptiste-Olivier Grenrin on most of his balloon activities. He was eventually appointed as France's chief test pilot

André Jacques Grenrin (André Jacques) was born in Paris on January 31, 1768. He studied physics before joining the French army. For several years Grenrin had been interested in hot air balloons and pushed to use them for military purposes.

The idea of ​​the parachute was first conceived by Leonardo da Vinci who described it in his writings. In 1783 Louis Sebastian Le Normand, inspired by Da Vinci, developed a parachute that consisted of two umbrellas. He used a parachute to jump safely from the top of a tall tree. Two years later Jean-Pierre Francois Blanchard put a small animal in a small basket and attached it to a parachute. So he threw the basket out of the balloon and opened the chute to slow down the speed of the basket and allow the animal to reach the ground safely.

Grenrin was the first to design and test a parachute capable of slowing down a person falling from a great height

Grenrin became convinced of the ability to use air resistance to slow a fall from a great height when he was a prisoner of war during the French Revolution. Although he failed to use it to escape from the Hungarian prison. Grenrin began experimenting with parachutes when he was a prisoner of war in Hungary. However, during his three-year stay there, he never reached the stage where he could use a parachute to escape his captors by jumping from the prison's high protective embankment.

In 1797 Grenrin completed the first parachute. It was composed of a canopy made of white canvas with a diameter of 7 meters. The parachute contained 36 ribs and ropes tied in a circle. The parachute was semi-rigid and this made it look like a large umbrella.

On October 22, 1797 in Parc Monceau in Paris (1 in Brumier, year six of the Republican calendar) he performed the world's first parachute experiment. After climbing to a height of 975 meters on a hydrogen powered balloon.

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The chute resembled a closed umbrella during ascent, with a pole coming down in the center and a rope passing through a tube inside the pole and connecting it to the balloon. Grenrin rode in a basket that was attached to the bottom of the chute. At a height of about 900 meters, he released the rope that connected the parachute to the balloon. The balloon continued up while Grenrin with the basket and parachute fell. The basket wobbled violently during the descent, and when it hit the ground, a few miles from the park from which it had taken off, it broke down and frayed, but Grenrin emerged unscathed. The parachute made of white fabric in the shape of an umbrella with a diameter of 7 meters. Genrin thus became the first person to design a parachute that made it possible to slow down a person falling from a great height and as mentioned he performed the experiment on himself.

In subsequent flights, the spin problem was solved with the suggestion of a French astronomer to cut a small ventilation hole in the center of the parachute. The air flowing from this opening makes it possible to stabilize the parachute in the air and prevents the dangerous spin. Later, Grenrin demonstrated show jumps over all of Europe, with the record being a jump from a height of 2,438 meters in England in 1802. In doing so, Grenrin founded the sport of skydiving on the one hand, but also the military application that he so longed for on the other hand.

According to Wikipedia (in English) Grenrin, a student of the balloon pioneer, Jacques Cherel on building and flying balloons and with his brother Jean-Baptiste-Olivier Grenrin in most of his ballooning activities. In the end he was appointed the chief aeronaut of France.

First woman in a hot air balloon

Regardless of the parachute, Grenrin played a part in another precedent, the emancipation of the woman. In his role as France's chief aeronaut, he conducted experiments and demonstrations at the Mansault Chapter in Paris beginning in 1797. He became a celebrity of the time when he announced in 1798 that his next flight would include a woman as a passenger. Although public opinion supported this, he was invited to testify before the police to justify the project. The officers were concerned about the effect of the low air pressure at high altitude on a woman's delicate body and their fear of losing consciousness as well as the moral implications of a man and woman flying together. After he was not convinced by the police's request, a warrant was issued against him forbidding him to do so due to the fact that the young woman dedicated herself to the adventure without knowing what the consequences of her actions would be. After consultation with both the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Police, the order was canceled because now (after the French Revolution) there is no more scandal for people of both sexes to take off in a hot air balloon than to see them jump into a carriage together." They also agreed that the approval of the certificate is proof of her confidence in the experiment and personal honesty.

Cytoine Henry had already been chosen, so when the ban was announced Grenrin was ready for the process. He published the takeoff in the short-lived Parisian newspaper L'Ami des Lois (1795-1798).

"Sitoin, the young woman who will accompany me, already wants to arrive on the day of the journey. I will come up with her from Monceau Park sometime in the next ten days. On July 8, 1798, the two arrived at the park and waved to the crowd, before astronomer Jerome Leland escorted them to the balloon. The journey went without incident and they landed in Gosnoville, about 30 kilometers north of Paris.

Grenrin's wife Jean-Genevieve was the first parachutist, when she parachuted after ascending in a balloon to a height of 900 meters on October 12, 1799.

André-Jacques Grenrin died in Paris on August 18, 1823, when he was preparing the equipment for take-off in a balloon in order to try a new parachute, a pole hit his head and killed him.