Ever since the Industrial Revolution human society has developed at a breakneck pace. The scale of advancements made in the last two hundred years is unprecedented in history, as we went from frock coats and the Spinning Jenny to supercomputers and landing on the Moon.
It has not always been a smooth road, however. This burst of creativeness, powered by mechanization and later automation, has claimed its share of inventors as they pushed the envelope of what was possible.
Alongside the successes were tragedies, and many inventors would suffer the same fate: killed by their own inventions as they experimented with what was possible. These human guinea pigs would generally perform a double role as inventor and test subject, and the results were sometimes deadly.
Here are eight such inventors, killed by their own inventions.
1. Franz Reichelt and his Prototype Parachute
2. Horace Lawson Hunley and his Combat Submarine
3. Alexander Bogdanov and Bad Blood
4. Henry Thuile and the Thuile Locomotive
5. Valerian Abakovsky and the Propellor Train Aerowagon
6. Henry Smolinski and his Flying Car
7. Henry Winstanley and his Eddystone Lighthouse
8. Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier: The First Air Fatality in History
Top Image: The first manned balloon flight in 1783. The pilot Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier would be killed on a similar flight two years later. Source: Unknown Author / Public Domain.
By Joseph Green