It would have been a hell of a ride: dropping 20 people from the Eiffel Tower in a champagne-glass pool
In 1891, a certain M. Carron of Grenoble decided that the Eiffel Tower was the perfect place to drop a 40-foot tall, 20,000-pound bullet filled with 20 people in leather armchairs into a 200-foot deep champagne-glass pool. This was certainly a singular insight. But in those days it represented something a little more than just giving people a thrill ride. Physics of impact aside for the moment, M.Carron’s bullet capsule would be released from the top of the interior of the Tower, about 1000 feet high, and released to fall into an excavated pool 150’ across and 200’ deep. The idea was that in addition to the springs inside the capsule, the water would act as a “shock absorber”, and so “the shock felt by the occupants on landing will be in no way unpleasant”.
It didn’t happen. Instead we got Disneyland Paris.
