Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service with me Ashley Byrne.

Today we're taking you back to 1970s New York and a stunt that brought the Big Apple to a virtual

standstill. 104 lifts of the 110 floors,

and the view on a clear day is 45 miles.

And that was just the view this man got

when he tightrope walked a wire

suspended between the two towers. He's Philip Peti.

It's the 7th of August 1974. The American papers are full of scandal

regarding President Nixon and Watergate, but early morning

Manhattan commuters are transfixed by the sight of a figure 1,350 feet above the ground,

walking between the lofty twin towers of the recently constructed

World Trade Center on a cable just one inch thick.

It was terrifying because nobody had ever set foot at that height. I was a

quarter of a mile in the sky and yet I was so happy after all those years of

dreaming that my body was about to have a two feet on that wire and it was a giant

exclamation point in my heart.

Philip Peti was making history. The previously unknown Frenchman had spent six

and a half years learning all he could about the towers and the safest way to rig a cable

between them.

On the picture you can see I avoid a giant smile.

It's a smile of confidence and faith in the rigging and I know now I will soon dedicate myself to performing on that cable.

As a child, Philippe had become interested in juggling, magic and other performance skills and at around the age of 17 he first learned to wire walk.

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