Inventor Franz Reichelt wants to test his novel "parachute suit" from as tall a structure as possible - and the Eiffel Tower seems ideal. Previous trial runs used a mannequin strapped to the chute and have not ended well. Despite this, his plan is to make the Eiffel Tower jump himself. Can he be persuaded to see sense?
Self-experimentation - particularly in the field of medicine - has a long and checkered history. Can we learn anything useful from such unorthodox experiments, or are they reckless acts of egotism and hubris?
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09/23/22 • 33 min
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Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford - A Leap of Faith From the Eiffel Tower
Transcript
Pushkin the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, almost two hundred feet above the ground. Next to the railings a table. On top of the table a wooden chair, and standing on the wooden chair a man, Franz Reichelt. He places a foot on the railing, he leans forward and peers over the edge. The year is nineteen twelve and Franz Reichelt is a tailor, thirty three years old. Born in Austria, he moved to Paris as a teenager and built a modestly successful b
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