![]() Aurel Vlaicu (1882–1913) died when his self-constructed airplane, Vlaicu II, failed during an attempt to cross the Carpathian Mountains.It was his first attempt with the parachute, and he had told the authorities he would first test it with a dummy. Franz Reichelt (1879–1912), a tailor, fell to his death from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute.Otto Lilienthal (1848–1896) died the day after crashing one of his hang gliders.Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier was the first known fatality in an air crash when his Rozière balloon crashed on 15 June 1785 while he and Pierre Romain attempted to cross the English Channel.He leapt from the roof of a mosque in Nishapur and fell to his death. 1003–1010), a Kazakh Turkic scholar from Farab, attempted to fly using two wooden wings and a rope. Fred Duesenberg (1876–1932) was killed in a high-speed road accident in a Duesenberg automobile.He drove his car into a woodpile while attempting to avoid farm wagons travelling side by side on the road. Francis Edgar Stanley (1849–1918) was killed while driving a Stanley Steamer automobile.He then fell off his prototype bike during a test run. 1879−1903), a General Electric employee, invented a new way to motorize bicycles. It is unknown whether the crash caused the heart attack or the heart attack caused the crash. Roper (1823–1896), inventor of the eponymous steam-powered bicycle, died of a heart attack or subsequent crash during a public speed trial in 1896. Luis Jiménez (1940–2006) was killed while creating the Blue Mustang, a blue horse statue located on the grounds of the Denver International Airport, when a section of it fell on him and severed an artery in his leg.It’s time to shake things up.This is a list of inventors whose deaths were in some manner caused by or related to a product, process, procedure, or other innovation that they invented or designed. We don’t remember their names, or note their sacrifice. All the while we ridicule or forget the countless men who didn’t beat the odds. When a man beats the odds and becomes wealthy, we say he achieved it through privilege instead of risk and toil. Now we post pictures of men doing something dangerous and caption it “this is why women live longer than men”. There was a time we celebrated this spirit, both for its rewards and its excesses. Every painfully won inch forwards is achieved by this desire in men to test and risk.įor each man who becomes a titan of industry hundreds of thousands risk it all on plans that lead to ruin. ![]() We sit in comfort on airplanes circling the globe now because of the drive that also caused this man to die at the base of a building, wearing a parachute of his own design.įor each continent mapped, untold numbers sailed off into the darkness of history and their deaths. For each man who makes a discovery that changes the world, untold thousands fail. Be it an idea, a business, a theory, a relationship. The next day, newspapers were full of illustrated stories about the death of the "reckless inventor", and the jump was shown in newsreels. The parachute failed to deploy and he fell 57 metres (187 ft) to his death. Despite attempts to dissuade him, he jumped from the first platform of the tower wearing his invention. ![]() He finally received permission in 1912, but when he arrived at the tower on 4 February he made it clear that he intended to jump personally rather than conduct an experiment with dummies. Initial experiments conducted with dummies dropped from the fifth floor of his apartment building had been successful, but he was unable to replicate those early successes with any of his subsequent designs.īelieving that a suitably high test platform would prove his invention's efficacy, Reichelt repeatedly petitioned the Parisian Prefecture of Police for permission to conduct a test from the Eiffel Tower. Reichelt had become fixated on developing a suit for aviators that would convert into a parachute and allow them to survive a fall should they be forced to leave their aircraft. VIDEO: Franz Reichelt’s Death Jump off the Eiffel Tower (1912) (trigger warning)įranz Reichelt (1879 – 4 February 1912), also known as Frantz Reichelt or François Reichelt, was an Austrian-born French tailor, inventor and parachuting pioneer, now sometimes referred to as the Flying Tailor, who is remembered for jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute of his own design.
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