In the news, there is a story about an enterprising young engineer working on a new design for a storage battery. Unfortunately, the battery prototype exploded, killing the young man. Truly a shame, not only for the young man and his family, but also because the choke point in our nation’s plan for alternative energy is the current lousy capability of storage batteries.
Unfortunately, such accidents with inventors and engineers are sort of the norm. New technology has a history of biting its creators in the ass. Perhaps this is nature’s feedback mechanism against an over-supply of mad scientists.
One of the earliest examples of this is Li Si, a Chinese philosopher, politician, and man of science during the Qin Dynasty (roughly 2200 years ago). As a sort of Renaissance man before the Renaissance, Li Si was an enlightened advisor to the emperor. Unfortunately, his enlightenment did not quite extend far enough to cover his inventions. This was a time of harsh physical punishments for crimes—some of which were known as the Five Pains, which included the amputation of hands, the cutting off of your nose, the amputation of all genital organs and finally—not to mention mercifully—the death of the unfortunate victim by decapitation or literally chopping the victim in half.
This gruesome process was as difficult as it was bloody, so Li Si developed a machine that would perform all the steps, one at a time, automating the torture and death of the prisoners. After Li Si was convicted of treason, he was given the chance of observing the machine’s operation first hand (thankful, no doubt, for his machine’s smooth operating efficiency).
Being killed by your own invention happens more frequently than you might imagine, particularly in hazardous fields like aviation. Frank Reichelt, a Parisian tailor, developed an overcoat that he believed could convert into a glider. When he begged to be allowed to test his invention from the Eiffel Tower, skeptical authorities grudgingly granted permission, but required Reichelt to test the invention first on a life-sized dummy. The inventor agreed, but once at the top of the tower, he decided that his hesitancy to test his invention himself might deter future investors. In the end, Reichelt’s descent still discouraged future investors. Permanently.
Aviation has been rather hard on inventors. Otto Lilienthal might have beat the Wright Brothers in developing powered flight had he not crashed his glider. Henry Smolinkski tried to develop a flying car, but unfortunately chose a Ford Pinto as the base for his futuristic vehicle. Sheikh Ismail hoped to develop a simple helicopter so inexpensive that it would available for the common man—sort of a flying Volkswagen. Unfortunately, during a test flight, the inventor perished when a main rotor blade malfunctioned and struck him in the head.
Inventors have fairly regularly gone down with their ships. Thomas Andrews went down with his Titanic, Horace Hunley developed three different submarines for the Confederate Navy, all of which sank, the last of which was the first true combat submarine and was lost with the inventor on board. Cowper Phipps Coles developed an innovative turret ship that promptly sank on its maiden voyage, killing all 480 on board, including Captain Coles.
If you work in the chemical industry, deaths relating to you work are damn near a job requirement. Madam Curie died of anemia caused by the radium she discovered, the first of many such deaths that occurred to scientists attempting to use the material in luminescent paint. Countless scientists died during the 20th century while trying to perfect chemical and biological weapons of war, with other details of some of these deaths just now coming to light. And, of course, we still don’t know the name of the Chinese chef who perished oCovid while attempting to perfect the recipe for Bat Tartare.
There is one truly dark prince of the invention world, Thomas Midgley. Probably a very nice guy who took care of his mother and had lots of friends…but his inventions definitely left the world worse off than before. First, he was the guy responsible for developing tetraethyl lead, thus putting lead in gasoline, and while this made internal combustion engines run better, it also put enough lead in the environment to cause significant health issues including a measurable drop of IQ among urban dwellers. Personally, I’m convinced that if enough research were done, we would probably find that this increased lead in the environment was responsible for the rise in reality television shows and New Coke.
When damn near everyone who understood the dangers of plumbism objected, Midgley (then an employee of General Motors) held demonstrations in which he poured bottles of tetraethyl lead over his hands, held the bottle under his nose while he inhaled deeply for more than a minute at a time, generally demonstrated the overall safety of his product. He stopped doing the demonstrations after he took a leave of absence from General Motors to be treated for severe lead poisoning.
If that wasn’t enough, Midgley then developed an improved gas for refrigeration units, chlorofluorocarbon, commercially known as Freon. You remember Freon—the gas responsible for depleting the ozone layer until a giant hole appeared in it over South Pole. For the life of me I can’t remember all the details about exactly why this was so bad (something about it let in so much ultraviolet that it created a herd of blind sheep in Patagonia). There was more to it than that, but there have been so many imminent catastrophic climate disasters looming on the horizon that I can’t keep track of them between leaded gas and Freon, even as I write this, there are environmentalists somewhere throwing darts at photos of Midgley, but they really need not bother, because just like the other inventors mentioned, Midgley eventually died at the hands of his own creation.
After contracting polio as an adult, he created a motorized system of wires and pulleys that would lift him out of bed and help him sit up up and be comfortable. In 1944, the system malfunctioned and strangled the inventor.
I have no idea what happened to Midgley’s pet, a blind sheep.
That's been going on since Icarus and Daedalus invented wax wings.
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