List of inventors killed by their own inventions
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of inventors who have been killed by inventions they designed or were involved in.
- Haman. In the Book of Esther, (2nd century BC) Haman is hung from the gallows he invented.
- Wan Hu. A minor officer in Ming Dynasty who was trying to launch himself into space using a rocket.
- William Bullock, Born 1813, died 1837, Bullock had his foot crushed while trying to repair a rotary printing press that he had invented. The resulting infection would later prove fatal.
- Otto Lilienthal died August 10, 1896 from injuries sustained two days earlier in a crash of one of his hang gliders.
- Thomas Midgley, Jr. accidentally strangled himself with the cord of a pulley-operated mechanical bed of his own design in 1944.
- Alexander Bogdanov, a physician and scientist, conducted an experiment for a "rejuvination" technique wherein he deliberately gave himself a transfusion of blood from a student who suffered from malaria and tuberculosis. He died of the subsequent infection.
[edit] Popular Myth
Contrary to popular belief Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the supposed inventor of the guillotine, did not invent it and did not die by it.
[edit] Further reading
- E. Cobham Brewer (1898). “Inventors Punished by their own inventions”, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Bartleby, 657–658.
