5 Inventors who died for their own creations

Not all inventors run with the same fate.

Some become famous for their creations and there are even those who go down in history as a name that everyone associates with their product.

From the Morse code of Samuel Morse and the pasteurization of Louis Pasteur, to the Jacuzzi jacuzzi and Ernő Rubik’s Rubik’s cube, going through more macabre things such as the Kaláshnikov AK-47 rifle by Mijail Kaláshnikov, more melodious like the saxophon of Adolphe Sax and tastier like the IV Sandwich Count of Sandwich …

The list is long.

But also long is that of innovators whose few names remember, although their inventions are used daily, such as Robert Yates, whom we owe the opening, Margaret Knight, which created the paper bag with flat background, or Garrett Augustus Morgan Mr., The African -American who invented the traffic light.

And then there are those whose death was closely linked to their own creations.

Here is 5 of them.

Fallen from heaven

To fly like birds has been an old shared dream.

And imagined: in Greek mythology, Daedalo did it to escape his own creation, the labyrinth of Crete, with feathers and wax of his own manufacturing that he adjusted behind his back and that of his son Icarus.

But as well as Icaro, others throughout history fell from the heights, although not precisely because “flying too close to the sun.”

Even when there was already flying and what was wanted was rather floating to cushion the falls of the sky, the force of gravity continued to charge victims.

One of them was the British watercolor Robert Cocking, remembered not for his works of art, but for dying in the first paracharidism accident in history.

In 1785, the famous French inventor Jean-Pierre Blanchard had made the first jump in modern parachute.

Half a century, and other parachutes, later, Cocking thought it could improve the design of those gadgets, and spent years developing one until it was time to show it.

On July 24, 1834, he took off aboard his creation and rose to the London sky hanging from the famous Royal Nassau Globe.

Upon reaching the landing zone in Greenwich, he had risen about 1,500 meters, and the sun was already putting on: he had to let go of the globe. It was now or never.

He did it and for a moment everything seemed good, although he was too fast. But suddenly, the parachute fabric turned, began to break and then separated completely from the basket.

Cocking died in the impact. He had forgotten to take into account the weight of the parachute in his calculations.

Some 80 years later, a French tailor ran with the same fate.

The fall of Franz Reichelt was just as spectacular, only that in his case he was illustrated not only by cartoonists but also photographers and a film of filming.

The tailor wanted to design a pilot suit that expands in a parachute in case they needed to eject the plane.

His first designs with folding wings made of silk were promising in tests with mannequins launched since his built in Paris.

But they were not easily laptops so it modified the design and, when it was ready, it looked for a higher launching place, so that the mannequins will gain enough speed and thus their parachutes were properly deployed and slowed down the fall.

The first floor of the Eiffel Tower, which was 57 meters from the ground, was ideal.

He obtained permission for a test, and summoned the press for February 4, 1912.

That day he made a surprise announcement: he would not throw a mannequin, he would launch himself.

Although the police warned him that he had no permission for a live jump, and that his friends tried to deter it, climbed into the tower and, with the partially deployed suit, he jumped.

The parachute never opened completely and Reichelt died in front of a multitude of spectators.

Against all odds

A comfortable appearance that, when someone sat on it, closed their arms around the occupant. A tea cart with sweets that floated magically from the roof …

Two of the many attractions that surprised visitors at the residence of Henry and Jane Winstanley, known as the Essex Wonderland, England.

They were the work of Winstanley painter and engraver, who fascinated mechanical and hydraulic gadgets.

In the 1690s, he opened a mathematical aquatic theater in London, full of extravagant and ingenious attractions of own clothing.

His popularity allowed him to invest in ships.

When two of them were shipwrecked in Eddystone’s rocks off the southwest coast of England, Henry Winstanley learned that this area was famous for causing shipwrecks and costing many sailors life for centuries.

I had to do something.

He designed plans to build a lighthouse in the rocks and took them to the admiralty, but it was difficult to convince the authorities: a lighthouse had never been built on the high seas and less on some rocks that the water covered in high tide.

The works began in 1696, but Winstanley was kidnapped by French pirates. He returned to his work as soon as they released him, and in 1698 he turned on the 60 candles of the 27 -meter tower.

When he observed that he creaked with strong winds and was not seen if the waves were very large, he redesigned the structure, reinforced the walls and increased its height to 40 meters.

Satisfied with the security of his invention, the first lighthouse in the high seas of history, Winstanley declared that he would spend happy one night during the “biggest storm that has ever been.”

No sooner said than done.

In 1703 the fiercest storm ever registered in the British Isles was unleashed, with winds that reached the 190 kilometers per hour, killing both about 15,000 people on the sea and on land.

Winstanley waited impatiently the opportunity to go see if his lighthouse had overcome such evidence, and on November 27 the winds leaned enough to do so.

Nice to find him standing, he told his companions that he would spend the night there and that they would look for him in the morning. They never saw it.

That night, the winds blew even stronger, taking every trace of the lighthouse and its creator, as the Ministry of History recounts.

But his work had not been in vain.

During the 5 years that worked, there were no shipwrecks in the area, a phenomenal feat in such a dangerous place.

That is why to this day there is a lighthouse in the rocks of Eddystone.

Rays and sparkles

In the 1740s, electrical phenomena aroused the interest of many scientists, especially after the accidental invention of the Leyden bottle in 1745.

The Russian physicist of German origin of the Baltic Georg Wilhelm Richmann, who performed pioneer works on electricity, was one of those enthusiasts.

When in 1752, Benjamin Franklin said the ray was an electrical phenomenon, and that an experiment could demonstrate it, Richmann wanted to do so, to be able to measure the force of atmospheric electricity with an electrometer that he had invented.

He installed an iron rod in his house connected to a roof cable, with his electrometer mounted on the rod, explains an article by Linda Hall Library.

On August 6, 1753, a storm broke out and Richmann hastened to return home from the Russian Academy of Sciences, taking with them to the Recorder of the Academy, who witnessed what happened.

Richmann had his eyes on his electrometer when the recorder saw a small lightning ball jump from the bar to Richmann’s forehead, sending it to the ground.

Then, there was an explosion and the flames began to spread.

Richmann was the first fatal victim of an electrical investigation.

“Not every electrician can die in a glorious way as the just envied Richmann,” British scientist Joseph Priestley would write in 1767.

A kicks

The nineteenth century saw the principle of an era of huge editorial empires, and to meet the demand, the limitations of existing electrical rotations had to be overcome.

And, in the 1860s, American William Bullock helped revolutionize the printing industry. He invented the rotary printing press of coil, which solved several of the most important technical problems.

His press allowed large continuous paper rolls to be automatically fed through rollers, thus eliminating the laborious manual feeding system of the presses that had previously.

In addition, the press automatically adjusted, printed on both sides, folded the paper and the leaves were cut, precisely and quickly.

But in April 1867, when he was making adjustments to one of his new presses that were being installed for the Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper, a transmission strap left the pulley.

Instead of turning off the newspaper, William Bullock honored that consecrated tradition of kicking a machine to work.

His leg was entangled in the mechanism and, although they managed to attend him, he developed gangrene and died during an operation to amputate his leg.

In 1964 he was honored with a plaque that says: “His invention of the rotary press (1863) made the modern newspaper possible.”