The Backstory: Inventions That Killed Their Inventors

Every invention begins with a spark—a moment when imagination lights up with the thought of . . possibility. Problem is . . the line between that spark . . and an explosive outcome can be thinner than you think. This is about when death comes at the hands of your own invention.
And remember, you can message me if you have a story you’d like me to dive into and share. On Facebook it’s Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you ever wonder about people who just have a
knack for thinking outside the box inventor types. It seems
exciting and rewarding, right, like the guys who invented the
light bulb, the automobile, the camera, or the women who
invented the windshield wipe, or the dishwasher and Wi Fi.
But things don't always go as planned when you're experimenting.

(00:20):
I'm Patty Steele. The line between genius and danger is
thinner than you might think. That's next on the backstory
the book. The backstory is back. Every invention begins with
a spark, a moment when imagination lights up with the
thought of possibility. Now, the problem is, the line between

(00:44):
that spark and an explosive outcome can be way thinner
than you expect. There are some chilling stories of inventors
who were so passionate about their creations that they paid
the ultimate price. They're human stories, filled with ambition, obsession,
and the dedicated pursuit of progress. But sometimes that pursuit

(01:06):
pushed them right over the edge. Sometimes an idea looks
brilliant on paper, but it's a little wobbly in the
lab or the workshop. It's found to be fatally flawed, though,
when gravity, pressure, or combustion gets involved. Let's head to Paris.
It's nineteen twelve. We're at the base of the Eiffel Tower.

(01:26):
At the center of a small crowd is Franz Reichelt,
an Austrian tailor, aka the Flying Tailor, as the press
called him. He was a guy with a mission. It
was just nine years after the Wright Brothers had flown
the first manned airplane. Aviation was brand new and terrifying.
Planes were flimsy, engines were temperamental, and if your plane

(01:49):
stalled midair, your only option was basically to plummet to
the ground. Franz wanted to save pilots by creating a
wearable parachute. It was a brand new idea at the time.
His shote looked like a heavy sort of rubber overcoat.
Test dummies mostly hadn't worked. He felt a human needed
to make the jump from a major height. He wanted

(02:11):
to use the Eiffel Tower. His friends pleaded with him
not to risk his life, but hey, he was all
in so at eight twenty two a m on a
cold February morning, as early newsreel cameras were rolling, he
climbed over the railing of the Eiffel Tower's first platform,
one hundred and eighty seven feet above the ground. He

(02:32):
was wearing this contraption that kind of looked a little
like Batman. He got an official permission for the test,
but only for the use of a dummy. But again,
that wasn't his plan. Out on the ledge, he paused,
He looked out at Paris. He straightened his mustache, and
he adjusted the many flaps of fabric stitched around his body.

(02:54):
Franz said absolutely nothing at all, and he stepped off
the platform. Well, as you probably guess, the parachute slash
coat never deployed. Franz plunged downward, smacking into the frozen
earth with a thud. He died on impact. The crowd
went silent, the news cameras kept rolling, and the video

(03:15):
is still out there. You can see it. It includes
a clip of investigators measuring the crater Franz's body left
in the earth. Franz Reikeld was ironically a man who
had tried to save lives but lost his own in
the attempt. And he's not alone. Now we head back
to the Civil War. Engineers in those days were obsessed

(03:35):
with underwater warfare and Horace Hunley, an engineer, came up
with one of the earliest combat submarines, the HL Hunley,
and named it after himself. It was a marvel for
its time, a hand cranked iron vessel that was designed
to sneak beneath enemy ships. Now the problem is it
was also a coffin waiting to happen. Its cramped interior

(04:00):
was only four feet high and a little over three
and a half feet wide. It had no ventilation, no
reliable ballast system to raise it out of the water,
and almost no lighting, and worst of all, no emergency escape.
But Hunley believed in it completely. After two test missions
ended in tragedy, killing all crew members, military officials refused

(04:23):
to operate it, but Hunley said he would prove its
safety by getting on board personally. So on October fifteenth,
eighteen sixty three, Hunley and seven men boarded the sub
in Charleston Harbor. It submerged, but it did not resurface.
When rescuers finally pulled it out of the water, they

(04:43):
found all eight men still seated at their posts, with
Hunley himself sitting near the controls, hands on the sub's crank,
they were all dead. Despite those deaths, the HL Hunley
was refitted, and it later became the first submarine to
sink enemy ship in battle when it took out the
USS Housatonic, a battle that also destroyed the Huntley and

(05:07):
killed its entire crew. Once again, the submarine's creator and
first true believer was also one of its victims. Finally,
do you love motorcycles? Well, this guy's contraption was one
of the earliest ancestors of today's motorcycles. Sylvester Roper was
born in the early eighteen hundreds, and he was one

(05:27):
of the first people to put a steam engine on
a bicycle frame and say, ah, yes, this seems like
a perfectly reasonable transportation decision. Roper invented what he called
the steam velocipede, basically a prototype for future motorcycles. Imagine
a regular bicycle, but instead of pedals, you're kind of

(05:48):
sitting on top of a boiler. What could possibly go wrong?
It's the eighteen nineties and Ropers in his seventies. Most
people see that as a time to relax and observe
the world, not get themselves into the thick of it.
But Roper was still tweaking, improving, and racing his steam
powered bikes. Then on June first, eighteen ninety six, he's

(06:10):
showing off his machine to a racetrack crowd in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The velocipede has a small steam engine strapped between its wheels.
It hid speeds that, for that time were absolutely jaw dropping.
Folks on hand watched Roper and his velocipede circle the
track faster and faster, hitting around forty miles an hour. Now,

(06:33):
remember the record speed for a car in those days
was around twenty miles an hour. This is eighteen ninety six,
and Roper was basically on something he welded together in
a shed. Crowds were absolutely amazed. But suddenly Roper wobbles
and the bike begins to sway. Not so amazing. It
veers off track and crashes. Roper is instantly dead. But

(06:58):
was it the crash or a hard brought on by
all the excitement. Did the invention kill him or did
his own body tap out first? Either way, Sylvester Roper
died doing forty on a steam powered ancestor of the motorcycle,
pushing either his invention or his body beyond its limits

(07:18):
What's interesting with all these inventions is that they were
precursors of contraptions we take for granted today the parachute,
the submarine, and the motorcycle, and the creators that believed
in them gave their lives to prove it could be done.
I hope you liked the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please
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(07:40):
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feel free to DM me if you have a story
you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele
and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The
Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,

(08:02):
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

(08:23):
know you needed to know