Tragic irony
The life of an inventor is not an easy one. First you have to come up
with a good idea that solves a problem in a way that no one has thought
of before, and then you need to design and engineer your idea to take it
from theory to reality. The very nature of invention means that
inventors are continuously pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
This drive to discover the next Big Thing has been a boon to humanity
and has given us inventions like the steam engine, the automobile and
the personal computer. It's the major reason why we're still not huddled
in caves fighting off wolves and cowering at the crack of thunder.
Henry Smolinski
Henry Smolinski was a Northrop-trained engineer who left his job to
start Advanced Vehicle Engineers, a company focused on bringing a flying
car to market. In 1973, the company built its first two prototypes made
by fusing the rear end of a Cessna Skymaster airplane with a Ford Pinto. The tail section was designed to be attached and detached from the car.
Smolinski was set to begin production for the retail market the next
year, but on Sept. 11, 1973, he went on a test flight with pilot Harold
Blake and was killed, along with Blake, when a wing strut detached from
the car. The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that bad welds
were responsible for the crash. (And it did involve a Pinto.)
Franz Reichelt
Franz Reichelt was an Austrian-born French inventor who made a living
as a tailor but spent his free time working on a flying parachute suit
designed to be worn by airplane pilots. Airplanes were a relatively new
invention when Reichelt was working on his design, having only been
flown for the first time in Kitty Hawk in 1903, and the mechanics of how
a pilot would escape a damaged plane were still being worked out.
Reichelt's first tests were performed using dummies and were successful
enough for him to test the suit himself, which he did by jumping off the
lower level of the Eiffel Tower. The 187-foot fall onto frozen ground killed him instantly.
Horace Lawson Hunley
Horace L. Hunley was a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana state
legislature who had a thing for submarines. He helped design and build
three different models for the Confederacy during the Civil War and was
ultimately killed when his third design went under. His first submarine
was built in New Orleans and was intentionally sunk when the city fell
to the Union in 1862, and his second submarine sunk in Mobile Bay in
Alabama. Hunley funded his third submarine himself, and on Oct. 15,
1863, Hunley, along with seven crewmembers, died when the sub that carried his name
sank in the waters off Charleston, S.C. The Confederacy recovered the
sunken sub and sent it back out with a new crew who managed to stay
alive and also managed a major accomplishment: to sink a ship. It was
the first ship to be taken down by a submersible vessel. However, the
Hunley disappeared on this first and last successful mission, taking its
third crew to the bottom of the sea.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
Thomas Midgley Jr. was a highly decorated chemist best known for his
work with "no-knock" or leaded gasoline and the greenhouse gas Freon. He
suffered from lead poisoning and once poured leaded gasoline all over
his hands and sniffed from a flask of it for 60 seconds during a press
conference to prove the fuel was safe. One might assume that Migley died
of lead poisoning, but he was actually killed by another one of his
inventions — the rope and pulley system he built to support his body
while he was in bed suffering from polio. He became entangled in the
ropes on Nov. 2, 1944, and suffocated.
Marie Curie
Marie Curie was a physicist and chemist best known for her work on
radioactivity; however, she also discovered the elements polonium and
radium. She was awarded two Nobel Prizes — one in physics which she won
jointly with her husband and Henri Becquerel, and another in chemistry
— and was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. She is still one of
only two (along with Linus Pauling) to accomplish that feat. Curie is
responsible for establishing the theory of radioactivity, but
unfortunately she unwittingly also discovered the fatal effect
radioactivity can have on your health; she died on July 4, 1934, of
aplastic anemia caused by radiation exposure.
Perillos of Athens
Of all the inventors on this list, this guy may be the one who most
deserved to die at the hand of his own invention. Perillos was a bronze
worker living in ancient Rome who designed a device called the Brazen Bull to
be used to painfully execute criminals. The Brazen Bull was a hollow
bull in which prisoners were locked and then roasted to death by a fire
underneath. The device was even designed to channel the screams of the
burning prisoner out of its nose to sound like a bull. Perillos pitched
his invention to Phalaris, the local tyrant lord, and after Perillos
showed Phalaris the bull, he was put inside and a fire was lit
underneath him. History isn't clear about if Perillos was pulled out
before dying, only to be thrown off a cliff by Phalaris' men, or if he
expired within the bull. Either way, the bull did him in.
Valerian Abakovsky
Valerian Abakovsky was a Russian inventor who died when his invention,
the high-speed Aerowagon train engine, derailed on a test run, killing
Abakovsky and five others. The Aerowagon had an airplane engine and
propeller and was designed to carry Soviet officials to and from Moscow.
Abakovsky's invention worked fine on the outgoing leg of the test run
but crashed during its return to the capital city. Abakovsky was just 26
years old.
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