Inventors That Died because of their Inventions

INVENTORS AND THEIR INVENTIONS

As an inventor, life is not easy, as they all have to come up with a brilliant idea that solves a problem in a way that no one has thought of before, after which there is need to design and engineer those ideas to take it from theory to reality. Invention had been proven to be a dangerous tasks, but nevertheless, those interested in inventing will still have the urge to go ahead because, there is need to bring forth new things, the world can't be stagnant with no update in technology.

But sometimes, things go wrong. Over the course of civilization, many inventors succeeded beyond their widest dreams. But some were epic fails, inventions don't work as the designers intended, and sometimes inventors are killed by the very ideas they brought to life.

1. Franz Reichelt

An Austrian-born French inventor named Franz Reichelt, made a living as a tailor but spent his free time working on a flying parachutes suit designed to be worn by airplane pilots. During when Reichelt was working on his design, airplanes were then a relatively new invention. In Kitty Hawk in 1903, having flown airplane for the first time, the mechanics of how a pilot would escape a damaged plane were still being worked out.

Due to the fact that Reichelt made a success during his first tests which were been performed using dummies, he went on by jumping off the lower level of the Eiffel Tower to test the parachutes suit, the 187-foot fall onto frozen ground killed him instantly.

2. Marie Curie

Marie Curie also With her husband were both 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. She was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. She is still one of only four people (along with Linus Pauling, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger) to accomplish that feat.

Curie established 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.

3. 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. His 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.

4. Henry Smolinski

A North-trained engineer, known as Henry Smolinski, left his job to start Advanced Vehicle Engineers, a company focused on bringing a flying car to market. He got the idea that a car could fly, so he bastardized a boxed-wing rear section of a Cessna 337 Skymaster and welded it onto the top of a '71 Ford Pinto. This worked out and he got it to fly.

The next year, Smolinski was set to begin production for the retail market, 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.

5. Sylvester H. Roper

The world's first motorcycle was invented by Sylvester H. Roper, of which he called it a velocipede and was actually a converted bicycle powered by a steam engine. He died during when he was testing the machine on a bicycle racing track. He was running at over 40mph. He suddenly wiped out and died. But his death was traced to be caused by heart attack (autopsy report). Since then, there's still this probability: whether the attack caused the crash or if the crash caused the attack.

6. Thomas Midgley, Jr.

A highly decorated chemist, Thomas Midgley, Jr. was 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 think 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.

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Courtesy:OperaNews