B.A.S.E. jumping is a sport involving the use of a parachute to jump from fixed objects. "BASE" is an acronym that stands for the four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump:

• Building
• Antenna (an uninhabited tower such as an aerial mast)
• Span (a bridge or arch)
• Earth (a cliff or other natural formation)

The acronym "BASE" was coined by film-maker Carl Boenish, his wife Jean Boenish, Phil Smith, and Phil Mayfield. Carl was the real catalyst behind modern B.A.S.E. jumping, and in 1978 filmed the first B.A.S.E. jumps (from El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park) to be made using ram-air parachutes and the freefall tracking technique. While B.A.S.E. jumps had been made prior to that time, the El Capitan activity was the effective birth of what is now called B.A.S.E. jumping. B.A.S.E. jumping is significantly more dangerous than similar sports such as skydiving from aircraft, and is currently regarded by many as a fringe extreme sport or stunt.

B.A.S.E. numbers are awarded to those who have made at least one jump from each of the four categories. When Phil Smith and Phil Mayfield jumped together from a Houston skyscraper on January 18th, 1981, they became the first to attain the exclusive B.A.S.E. numbers (B.A.S.E. #1 and #2, respectively), having already jumped from antennae, spans, and earthen objects. Jean and Carl Boenish qualified for B.A.S.E. numbers 3 and 4 soon after. A separate "award" was soon enacted for Night B.A.S.E. jumping when Mayfield completed each category at night, becoming Night B.A.S.E. #1, with Smith qualifying a few weeks later.

During the early eighties, nearly all B.A.S.E. jumps were made using standard skydiving equipment, including two parachutes (main and reserve), and deployment components. Later on, specialized equipment and techniques were developed that were designed specifically for the unique needs of B.A.S.E. jumping.

There are isolated examples of B.A.S.E. jumps dating from the late 1700s.

• In 1783, Louis-Sébastien Lenormand made the first parachute jump from the tower of the Montpellier   observatory, preceding the jump from a balloon by Garnerin.
• In 1912, Frederick Law jumped from the Statue of Liberty
• In 1913, Štefan Banič jumped from a building in order to demonstrate his new parachute to the U. S.   Patent   Office and military
• In 1913, a Russian student Vladimir Ossovski (Владимир Оссовский), from the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, jumped from the 53-meter high bridge over the river Seine in Rouen (France), using the parachute RK-1, invented a year before that by Gleb Kotelnikov (1872-1944). Ossovski planned jumping from the Eiffel Tower too, but the mayor of Paris didn’t allow that. (Information from the Russian edition of GEO magazine, issue 11, November    2006, GEO).
• In 1966, Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert jumped from the cliff "El Capitan" in Yosemite Valley
• On 9 November 1975, the first person to parachute off the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, was a member    of    the construction crew, Bill Eustace. He was fired.
• In 1975, Owen J. Quinn, a jobless man, parachuted from the south tower of the World Trade Center to    publicize the plight of the unemployed.
• In 1976 Rick Sylvester skied off Canada's Mount Asgard for the opening sequence of the James Bond    movie    The Spy Who Loved Me, giving the wider world its first look at BASE jumping.

 

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