1-631-640 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Andre Jacques Garnerin, French aeronaut and the first parachutist, c1800 (1910). Garnerin (1769-1823) became a balloon inspector in the French Army in 1793. In Paris in 1797, he performed the first public exhibition of a parachute jump from a free-flying balloon, descending 3200 feet. He was the first aeronaut to parachute regularly. He often worked with his brother, Jean-Baptiste-Olivier Garnerin. Illustration from The Connoisseur, (August 1910).