André-Jacques Garnerin

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1797-1798 depiction of Garnerin conducting a "voyage aérien" with "la citoyenne Henri"

Garnerin releases the balloon and descends with the help of a parachute, 1797. Illustration from the late 19th century.

André-Jacques Garnerin (January 31, 1769 - August 18, 1823) was the inventor of the frameless parachute. He was born in Paris.

His early experiments were based on umbrella-shaped devices. He was captured by British troops during the first phase of the Napoleonic Wars 1792 - 1797, turned over to the Austrians and held a prisoner in Buda in Hungary for three years.

After his release, Garnerin was involved with the flight of hot air balloons. He carried out the first jump with a Silk parachute on October 22, 1797, jumping out of a balloon over Parc Monceau, Paris. After a descent of 3,000 feet (900 m), he landed without injury in front of an admiring crowd. On October 3-4 1803, he covered a distance of 245 miles (395 km) between Paris and Clausen with his balloon.

His wife Jeanne-Geneviève was the first female parachutist; as no real material parachute can sustain its entire flight without some positive above-zero glide ratio, then for some, if not almost all of her descent was in a gliding parachute (subset of hang gliders) and thus she was the best candidate for being the first woman hang glider rider.

Garnerin died in a construction accident while making a balloon in Paris. He was hit by a beam.