Technology has changed over time. Different inventions are evolving around, Science has allowed us to get to where we are, but some of those advances have cost the lives of those who discovered them. Here is a list of 7 best inventors killed by their own inventions.
This is the case of these seven best inventors and scientists, who ended up being victims of their own inventions. There are, of course, other cases, but here are some of the most notable of that most tragic part of our scientific evolution.
Francis Edgar Stanley
This American best inventors, entrepreneur and businessman who first turned to photography — he sold his business to George Eastman of Eastman-Kodak for $ 500,000 — and then took an interest in automobiles.
Thus, together with his brother Freelan, he created the unique steam engine cars in 1897. His vehicles were surprisingly fast and reached 205 km / h in 1906.
However, combustion cars were much more economical and promising, and the business did not prosper. Stanley died in an accident in one of his cars when he crashed it into a pile of firewood while trying to avoid a series of cars that crossed the road he was on.
Franz Reichelt
This French tailor had a very special obsession: designing a suit that could become a parachute. The boom in aviation was beginning to be remarkable, and Reichelt succeeded in making that suit behave satisfactorily in several tests with mannequins.
That led him to want to try it himself. He convinced the French police of the time to let him drop a mannequin in his parachute suit from the Eiffel Tower, but at the last moment it was he who jumped despite the warnings of his friends, who alleged that among other things the wind was not favorable. The parachute malfunctioned and ended up crashing to the ground. A later autopsy revealed that Reichelt actually died of a heart attack during the fall.
Henry Smolinski
Smolinski is another best inventors who had been working for Northrop as an aeronautical engineer for years when it occurred to him that creating a flying car had a future. He quit that job and ended up creating a unique design with his partner, Hal Blake.
That project that ended up being called AVE Mizar mixed a Ford Pinto with the wings of the Cessna 337, and although there were some failures during its first test, they managed to be partially successful.
At the end of 1973 they both made a test flight and their aerial car crashed into a tree due to a problem with the wings: the Mizar ended up crashing into a truck and caught fire, killing the creators of this idea.
Marie Curie
Probably the most famous and famous of all that make up this list, Polish physicists and chemistry managed to win the Nobel Prize twice in her life: in 1903 for radioactivity and in 1911 in chemistry for the discovery of radium and polonium.
After the death of her husband Pierre in 1906, Madame Curie continued the work of both, but their continuous exposure to radioactive materials ended up killing her: her health began to deteriorate in the late 1920s, and she fell ill with leukemia and died on the 4th. July 1934.
Otto Lilienthal
This German engineer recklessly pursued the goal of getting the man to fly, and in fact his last words were “Sacrifices are necessary!” He is considered the first human being to launch himself into the air, to fly and to land successfully thanks to his gliders.
Lilienthal’s work inspired the Wright brothers. His glider design is historic: he created 18 different models and performed more than 2,000 flights on these mechanisms that had a big problem: there was practically no means of controlling the flight.
On his last flight in August 1986 Lilienthal fell from a height of 17 meters and broke his spine. He died the next day.
Alexander Bogdanov
This Belarusian doctor, philosopher, economist and politician was especially active in these and other fields, but in the scientific field he tried to revolutionize the world with a system that according to him would have the ability to rejuvenate the human being through blood transfusions.
He even convinced Stalin to create the Blood Transfusion Institute, and after undergoing several himself, he claimed that his eyesight had improved and that he had stopped losing hair. At the age of 54, he received the blood of a physics student with traces of tuberculosis and malaria and ended up dying.
Thomas Andrews
This Irish best inventors and businessman had a great mission before him: to build three great ocean liners, one of which was the legendary Titanic. Among his suggestions for these ships were to have at least 46 lifeboats, watertight bulkheads and a double frame to protect the ship from collisions.
Much of his suggestions were ignored by managers at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which commissioned several employees to make the maiden voyage on the Titanic to make sure everything was going according to schedule. That night in April 1912, Andrews noticed the vibration that followed the Titanic’s collision with the Iceberg, and after conducting the inspection he advised the captain that they had no more than an hour and a half to abandon ship.
He tried to save as many people as possible and several witnesses said they recall seeing Andrews on deck locating the life jackets and encouraging people to get into the boats. His body was never recovered.