Earlier tethered jumping

In April 1960 BBC Television broadcast a documentary film The Land Divers of Pentecost, made by David Attenborough, which featured the land divers Sa Naghol of Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, young men who jumped from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles as a test of their courage and passage into manhood.A similar practice, only with a much slower pace for falling, has been practised as the Danza de los Voladores de Papantla or the Papantla flyers of central Mexico, a tradition dating back to the days of the Aztecs.

A tower 4,000 feet 1,200 m high with a system to drop a car suspended by a cable of best rubber was proposed for the Chicago World Fair, 1892 1893. The car, seating two hundred people, would be shoved from a platform on the tower and then bounce to a stop. The designer engineer suggested that for safety the ground below be covered with eight feet of feather bedding. The proposal was declined by the Fairs organizers.