Look at the world around you and appreciate how many things started as a mere notion. Mankind has the unique ability to transform thoughts and concepts into material realities. Everything you see, from computers to bricks, started as an idea in someone’s head. There are, however, just as many inventions that ended up doing in their creators. Indeed, dozens of inventors were killed by their own creations.
Call it fate, destiny, or just bad luck, but there is a surprising amount of inventors who later died from their creations. While many of them make sense, as with the heaps of vehicle and airplane inventors killed while testing their designs, others will boggle the mind. As the saying goes, when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
For a select few inventors, their manifestation proved to be their ultimate undoing. In this article, we will explore 20 inventors killed by their creations. Some are well-known, others are obscure, but all of them will leave you wondering what can happen when we impose our ideas on existence. (For inventions that had a positive impact, discover famous scientific discoveries that changed the course of history.)
To compile a list of inventors killed by their own inventions, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of entertainment and lifestyle publications, including Discover Magazine. Next, we selected inventors from a range of industries and eras in time. After that, we confirmed biographical information about the inventors using sites like The Automotive Hall of Fame and Atlas Obscura.
Webster Wagner
A manufacturer, inventor, and politician from New York, Wagner created his fateful designs while working for the New York Central Railroad. There, he invented the sleeping train car, the parlor car, and a ventilation system for railroad cars.
Though he later became a New York State Assembly member, his post was short-lived. In 1882, while traveling on a rail trip between Albany and New York City, his train and another collided. After the dust settled, Wagner was crushed between two railroad cars he invented.
Henri Thuile
After inventing the Thuile steam-powered locomotive train, Frenchman Thuile was killed during a machine test run between the French cities of Chartres and Orléans. Reports differ on his exact cause of death, however. Some say he was thrown from the craft and died upon hitting a telegraph pole. Others say he leaned too far outside of the train compartments, whereby a collision with a piece of bridge scaffolding killed him instantly.
Valerian Ivanovich Abakovsky
Though the Russian inventor started as a chauffeur for the Soviet secret police, he also invented the Aerowagon, a high-speed train outfitted with an airplane engine and propeller to ensure maximum speed.
Catching the attention of Soviet officials, the Aerowagon was tested with several people on board, including Russian politicians and Abokovsky. Though the machine successfully made the first leg of its journey to Tula, it failed to arrive back in Moscow. Instead, the Aerowagon derailed at a high speed, killing everyone on board, including Abakovsky.
Alexander Bogdanov
Bogdanov, a Russian polymath, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a pioneer of hematology science. Due to this, Bogdanov founded the first Institute of Blood Transfusion. However, the science was in its infancy, and Bogdanov made a fatal mistake when attempting a direct blood transfusion.
Believing his blood was resistant to tuberculosis, Bogdanov attempted a mutual blood transfusion between himself and a 21-year-old student with an inactive case of tuberculosis. His hypothesis that the transfusion would rejuvenate his own blood and treat the student’s disease proved a mistake. Instead, Bogdanov died almost instantly from acute hemolytic transfusion reaction.
Thomas Midgley Jr.
A noted engineer and chemist, Midgley Jr. contracted a severe case of polio at the age of 51. This left him severely disabled. To combat the illness, he created a complex system of pulleys and levers to help lift himself out of bed.
Before all this, Midgley Jr. was known for his inventions of tetraethyl lead, an additive for gasoline, as well as chlorofluorocarbons. However, his special rope and pulley system invention proved to be his last. At age 55, he became entangled in his rope system and subsequently died of strangulation. While it was reported to the public that his death was an accident, privately, it was reported to be a suicide.
Stockton Rush
A wealthy businessman, pilot, and engineer, Rush oversaw the design and building of the Oceangate ship, which was created to ferry tourists deep underwater to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
However, during a submersible test, some aspects of the design or construction proved fatal. While carrying a few other people on board, including Rush, the craft imploded deep underwater, killing everyone on board. In a bit of hubris, Rush was quoted beforehand as saying, “Safety is just pure waste.”
William Pitt
Pitt was an engineer and ferryman from New Brunswick, Canada. He has operated a ferry company for decades, whisking travelers between Kingston Peninsula and the Kennebecasis Valley. During that time, Pitt devised an underwater cable ferry, which he installed between Reed’s Point and Gondola Point. Though the invention proved successful, it would also take Pitt’s life. After falling into the machinery of the new ferry invention, Pitt died from serious injuries.
John Day
Not only was Day one of the inventors killed by their own creations, but he was the first death attributed to a submarine. A carpenter and wheelwright by trade, Day convinced a patron to put up the money for a wooden diving chamber of his design. Betting his patron he could descend at least 130 feet, Day boarded his diving chamber and sunk to the depths of Plymouth Sound off the coast of England. Unfortunately, Day had miscalculated the trim on the diving chamber and died due to extreme pressure during his descent.
Henry Winstanley
A painter, engineer, and maritime merchant, Winstanley lost two of his ships on the Eddystone Rocks near Cornwall, England, and then set about creating a lighthouse in the area.
In one sense, the ornate-looking Eddystone Lighthouse was a success. During its five years of operation, not a single ship crashed on the nearby rocks. Winstanley, however, had so much faith in his creation that he planned to reside inside it during the Great Storm of 1703. The storm proved to be too much for the lighthouse to bear as it was destroyed, killing five men inside, including Winstanley.
Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky
Credited as the inventor of luminescent paint, von Sochocky subsequently founded the United States Radium Corporation. Unaware of the disastrous effects of radium on the human body, von Sochoky eventually died from aplastic anemia due to the radioactive paint of his own design.
William Bullock
Bullock, an American inventor in the 19th century, was credited with improvements to the rotary printing press, which increased its speed and efficiency and helped catalyze the then-nascent printing industry. In 1867, however, tragedy struck Bullock. While adjusting one of his machines in Philadelphia, he attempted to kick a driving belt onto a pulley. Instead, his leg was caught and crushed in the machine. Bullock subsequently developed gangrene and died during a leg amputation surgery.
Karel Soucek
A Czech-born stuntman by trade, Soucek later emigrated to Canada, where he created a shock-absorbent barrel to use in his stunts. However, a barrel demonstration at the Houston Astrodome in 1985 proved to be his last. Soucek died after the rim’s barrel hit the water tank meant to cushion his fall. (For more successful stunts, discover jaw-dropping movie stunts you need to see.)
Cowper Phipps Coles
Coles was a British naval captain and inventor. Spending much of his life at sea, Coles used his experience to design various machines, including a revolving gun turret for ships. Upon public appeal, Coles secured the installment of his invention on various English battleships. His voyage on the HMS Captain, a ship built using his designs, proved fatal. Due to intense weather, the HMS Captain’s hurricane deck caught the wind and capsized the boat, killing everyone on board, including Coles.
William Nelson
While employed by the General Electric Corporation in upstate New York, Nelson created a motorized bicycle. Whether or not the bike was revolutionary, we will never know. That’s because Nelson died instantly at the age of 24 during a test run of his invention.
Fred Duesenberg
Perhaps the most famous inventor who was killed by his own invention is Duesenberg. A pioneer of automobile design, Duesenberg helped influence the creation of the modern car. He is also credited with inventing the eight-cylinder engine as well as four-wheel hydraulic brakes. Subsequently, Duesenberg and his brother founded the Duesenberg Motor Company.
During its heyday, the Duesenberg Motor Company introduced classic vehicles such as the Duesenberg Model A and Models X, S, and J. The brothers were also involved in auto racing. Fred, however, would taste the consequences of his success on July 2, 1932. While driving a Duesenberg passenger car with a prototype engine, he lost control of the vehicle, flipping it and seriously injuring himself. From this, he developed pleural pneumonia and subsequently died.
Francis Edgar Stanley
Though Stanley made his wealth on the photographic plate, he later turned his sights on automobiles. This led to the founding of the Stanley Motor Carriage Company and its infamous steam-powered vehicle, the Stanley Steamer.
A hit with wealthy customers, the Stanley Steamer achieved a new land speed record in 1906, clocking in at 127.6 mph. However, the steamer was perhaps too overpowered, as it would later take Stanley’s life. While driving in a Steamer through Wenham, Massachusetts, in 1918, Stanley attempted to avoid farm wagons on the road. In the process, he drove straight into a woodpile and died instantly.
Abu Nasr al-Jawhari
Abu Nasr al-Jawhari was many things, including an inventor. Before his fateful invention, however, he was best known as a lexicographer. He is also credited with authoring one of the most extensive Arabic dictionaries. Subsequently, he moved to Nishapur, Iran, where he got it into his head that he could fly like a bird. Some say it was delusions, while others say he was influenced by Abbas ibn Firnas’ earlier attempt at flight. Either way, al-Jawhari died after jumping from the roof of a mosque, attempting to fly using two wooden wings and rope in 1010 AD.
Robert Cocking
While Cocking was a noted watercolorist by trade, he always held a keen fascination with science. After seeing André-Jacques Garnerin make the first successful parachute jump in 1802, Cocking was inspired to create his own parachute. Confident in a conical-shaped parachute design of his own making, Cocking tested it in front of a large crowd in London. However, he had miscalculated the weight of the parachute. Upon descent, Cocking and his parachute broke up, flinging him to his death.
Franz Reichelt
Reichelt, a tailor by trade, became obsessed with creating parachute suits for pilots who had to evacuate their crafts. Though his previous designs failed, Reichelt was convinced it was simply a matter of height. A large crowd gathered around the Eiffel Tower to watch Reichelt jump off inside of his parachute suit. Instead, he plummeted like a bullet into the ground. There is even a video out there of his fatal mistake.
Max Valier
Austrian-born Max Valier was a pioneer in the field of rocketry. A prominent figure in Opel-RAK, the first serious rocket program, he also created a “Spaceflight Society,” which brought together many minds that one day made spaceflight a reality. Though he had successfully tested several early rockets, it would be a liquid-fueled rocket that would take his life. While working in his laboratory, an alcohol-fueled rocket exploded on his test bench, killing Valier instantly. (For inventors who lamented their designs, here 10 inventors who regretted creating their own inventions.)