Andre-Jacques Garnerin releases the balloon and descends with the help of a parachute, 1797.
Immediately, Garnerin and his basket began to fall.
The gondola swung violently during the descent, bumping on the ground and bouncing back into the air.
Despite the rough landing, Garnerin emerged uninjured and triumphant, though reportedly nauseous from the oscillations.
Among the crowd wasRobert Cocking, a British watercolor artist and balloon enthusiast.
Cocking was short, round, and pleasantly untidy, and much loved by his young students.
He was obsessed with balloons, and his house was filled with his drawings of them.
Franz Reichelt wearing his parachute suit.
Cocking spent many years developing his improved parachute based on Cayley’s design.
It was an inverted cone 107 feet in circumference.
Suspended below the parachute was a wicker basket that would carry Cocking.
Late in the afternoon of 24 July 1837, at Vauxhall Gardens, Robert Cocking began his ascent.
And with that, he pulled the latch releasing the parachute from the balloon.
Relieved of the weight, the balloon shot upwards.
Then, suddenly, the entire apparatus collapsed inside out, like an inverted umbrella on a windy day.
It shot straight down to the earth.
When people found him in his smashed-up basket, he was still alive, mumbling unintelligibly.
In ten minutes, he was dead.
The ascent of the Royal Nassau Balloon with Cockings parachute attached, and its fatal descent.
A local publican charged people sixpence to view Cockings mangled body.
Later analysis revealed that the parachutes design was sound, but its construction was flimsy.
