Marques de Bacqueville's Leap of Faith
Illustration by Albert Tissandier showing Marquis de Bacqueville’s leap of faith in 1742. De Bacqueville had strapped wing-like paddles to his arms and legs, and then leaped off the roof of his home in Paris, attempting to fly across the river Seines.[1]
Pictured above is Marquis de Bacqueville, an eccentric French nobleman best known for his attempt at human flight in 1742. His full name was Jean-François Boyvin de Bonnetot, and he was born in Rouen in 1688. Details about his attempted flight are varied, but apparently on March 19, 1742 in Paris, de Bacqueville announced his intention to fly from one side of the river Seines to the other. He had built a set of four paddle-like wings and attached them to his arms and legs, and his plan was to leap from the roof of a building on the Rue des Saints-Peres and fly across the river to the Tuileries Gardens.
A crowd had formed to witness the event, and after de Bacqueville was satisfied with his apparatus, he jumped from the roof, beating his wings furiously. To the crowd’s surprise, he caught a breeze and seemed to be gliding successfully, but a few seconds later he lost control and crashed into a washerwoman’s barge in the river, breaking one of his legs.[2] Little is known about the events following this leap, however we do know that he never attempted to fly again.
Drawing from a French educational card from the early 20th century. The caption reads: ‘In the air: the wings of the Marquis de Bacqueville, 1750. Having sprung from his window, he reached the middle of the Seine, but he fell on a washerwoman’s barge.’
Among the spectators to witness de Bacqueville’s capricious leap was writer and philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, who subsequently wrote an article titled The New Daedalus about human flight and its difficulties.[2] Rousseau was referencing the Greek myth of Daedalus, who achieved flight after building a set of wings for himself and his son Icarus. De Bacqueville was driven by the same urge that drive Daedalus and Icarus. This inner drive is what gives events like these a special magnetism for people. The crowd of onlookers is evidence of this inner drive, gathered to witness the possibility and the hope of human flight. Somewhere inside them, and all of us, is the belief that humanity must escape the surface of the Earth, and the rich and storied history of our attempts to do so is further evidence of our inner need for it.
Read more about other ideas for flying machines here.
[1]: Sircos, Alfred, and Th. Pallier. Histoire des Ballons et des Sscensions Célèbres. Paris: F.Roy, 1876. 105.
[2]: Hodgins, Eric and F. Alexander Magoun. Sky High, The Story of Aviation. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1930.
[3]: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Autobiographical, Scientific, Religious, Moral, and Literary Writings. Translated by Christopher Kelly. Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2006. 147-154.