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Deadly inventions: a short guide
A good invention can be bad for your health, as Segway boss Jimi Heselden found after he rode one of the two-wheelers off a cliff to his death, but what other inventions have sprung a nasty surprise?
Aviation had a catalogue of inventions that backfired spectacularly in its early years, which is perhaps logical given the deleterious effects of gravity on the body, particularly when experienced from height.
The Muslim scholar Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari was convinced his wooden wings-and-rope contraption would let him fly almost 1,000 years ago. It did not. Which he learned quickly after jumping from the roof of a mosque.
The Icarus tradition was continued for centuries: Otto Lilienthal, the 19th century German pioneer of human flight, died after incurring a broken spine in one 1896 test flight; and Franz Reichelt, a French tailor who was convinced he had developed a functioning parachute, climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower to test it in 1912, ignored his friends' pleas to use a test dummy, jumped off, and died. To the astonishment of the watching cameramen.
William Bullock invented the web rotary printing press, which used continuous rolls and speeded up the process. His foot was crushed while installing a new machine in Philadelphia in 1867. It developed gangrene and he died during the amputation.
Marie Curie, the Polish-born physicist whose pioneering work led to the discovery of polonium and radium, won two Nobel Prizes but died in 1934 from leukaemia resulting from prolonged exposure to materials during her research.
And Regent James Douglas, the 4th Earl of Morton, should have known his invention would come back to haunt him. He invented the Scottish maiden, a kind of guillotine, which was later used to behead him.
Lighthouse pioneer Henry Winstanley was lost at sea in 1703; Jim Fixx, pioneer of popularising jogging, died while on a run; but for more of this, click here.