Inventions in Everything: The Wearable Fire Escape

Oppenheimer. That’s the name of a popular movie that also happened to win the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2024, along with six additional Oscars. The movie told a story about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the U.S. physicist who led the successful American effort to invent the atomic bomb during the Second World War.

But that’s not the only Oppenheimer who can claim credit for an invention. In 1879, Benjamin B. Oppenheimer of Trenton, Tennessee was awarded U.S. Patent 221,855 for his invention of an improvement in fire-escapes. His innovation was making a fire-escape into something a person seeking to escape a blazing building could wear in high fashion.

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s the illustration from the patent, which we’ve colorized:

Here’s how Oppenheimer describes how he envisioned his inventions would work in practice:

The accompanying drawing represents a side view of a person with my improved fire-escape, shown as applied for use.

This invention relates to an improved fire-escape or safety device, by which a person may safely jump out of the window of a burning building from any height, and land, without injury and without the least damage, on the ground; and it consists of a parachute attached, in suitable manner, to the upper part of the body, in combination with overshoes having elastic bottom pads of suitable thickness to take up the concussion with the ground.

Referring to the drawing, A represents a head-piece, constructed in the nature of a parachute, and made of soft or waxed cloth, awning-cloth, or other suitable fabric. The parachute is about four-or-five feet in diameter, stiffened by a suitable frame, and attached by a leather strap or other fastening, in reliable manner, to the head, neck, or arms.

In connection with the head-piece or parachute applied to the upper part of the body are used overshoes B, with elastic soles or pads C, of suitable thickness, that take up the sudden shock on arriving on the ground.

The parachute serves for the purpose of buoying the body in the air after the person has leaped from the window of the burning building, while the padded shoes secure the safe landing on the ground.

Sixty-five years later, another Oppenheimer would, perhaps inspired by the concept of mushroom-like parachute rising above the intense heat of flames in the atmosphere, re-envision the other Oppenheimer’s innovation as something quite different.

In any case, Benjamin Oppenheimer’s invention combining a mushroom-like parachute hat (or even a parachute-like mushroom hat) with padded platform shoes ultimately led nowhere, with no indication of any modern application where they might be considered a vital fashion pairing for escaping a burning building.

From the Inventions in Everything Archives

The IIE team has previously covered the following wearable innovations:

• Inventions in Everything: A Corking Good Life Jacket
• Inventions in Everything: The Table You Wear
• Inventions in Everything: Sled Pants
• Inventions in Everything: The Beerbrella
• Inventions in Everything: Bulletproof Underwear
• Inventions in Everything: Treadmills Inside Your Shoes
• The Bike That Rides You