Google Doodle Celebrates 216th Anniversary of First Parachute Jump

| Updated: Tuesday, September 30, 2014, 11:08 [IST]

Today Google has come up with an interactive doodle in its home page to commemorate the 216th anniversary of the first parachute jump made by André-Jacques Garnerin.

The doodle is an animated, interactive one, where you have to control the parachute using the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard or the mouse keys. The parachute ascends into the sky fist with the help of the balloon and once it crosses the limit of cloud it starts to descend rapidly. during the descending phase you should control the parachute and move through clouds, landing either on tree tops or in the sea.

Google Doodle Celebrates 216th Anniversary of First Parachute Jump

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The Doodle recollects the 22nd day of October, 1797 when the French balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin performed the commendable act for the first time. That day at Parc Monceau in Paris using a seven-metre silk parachute, he was lifted up in a basket attached to a balloon to more than 3,200 feet (1,000 metres).

He released the balloon to let the parachute unfurled above him. The ride for hin was quite bumpy then and more more bumpy was the landing. However five years later Garnerin again made a similar jump from 8,000 feet (2,440 metres). He was also appointed as Official Aeronaut of France after this commendable achievement.

To go a bit on the life of Garnerin, he was born on January 31, 1769. He studied physics and became an inspector in the French army in 1793. He followed his first parachuting in 1797 in Paris with many other exhibitions. André-Jacques Garnerin died on August 18th, 1823, while he was building his next balloon. He was crushed by a falling beam.