In 1891 a French inventor named Carron produced plans for a device he was sure would "delight the lovers of sensational emotions." His idea was to drop a bullet-shaped steel shell from the apex of the Eiffel Tower into a pool of water 1000 feet below.
Inside the shell would be 15 passengers presumably enjoying the sensational emotion of being weightless for a couple of seconds.
"If Mr. Carron's calculations are correct," suggested the magazine La Nature, the shell would hit the water at a speed of over 170 miles an hour, "a speed at which no human being has ever traveled as yet." Making a free fall such as this, continues the reporter's breezy understatement, "will indeed be a vertiginous experience." It is easy to fall 1000 feet, he points out to those who probably never gave doing so much thought, "but it has hither to been doubtful whether one could do this and survive."
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