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Speaker 1: Do you ever wonder about people who just have a

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Speaker 1: knack for thinking outside the box inventor types. It seems

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Speaker 1: exciting and rewarding, right, like the guys who invented the

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Speaker 1: light bulb, the automobile, the camera, or the women who

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Speaker 1: invented the windshield wipe, or the dishwasher and Wi Fi.

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Speaker 1: But things don't always go as planned when you're experimenting.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The line between genius and danger is

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Speaker 1: thinner than you might think. That's next on the backstory

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Speaker 1: the book. The backstory is back. Every invention begins with

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Speaker 1: a spark, a moment when imagination lights up with the

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Speaker 1: thought of possibility. Now, the problem is, the line between

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Speaker 1: that spark and an explosive outcome can be way thinner

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Speaker 1: than you expect. There are some chilling stories of inventors

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Speaker 1: who were so passionate about their creations that they paid

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Speaker 1: the ultimate price. They're human stories, filled with ambition, obsession,

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Speaker 1: and the dedicated pursuit of progress. But sometimes that pursuit

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Speaker 1: pushed them right over the edge. Sometimes an idea looks

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Speaker 1: brilliant on paper, but it's a little wobbly in the

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Speaker 1: lab or the workshop. It's found to be fatally flawed, though,

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Speaker 1: when gravity, pressure, or combustion gets involved. Let's head to Paris.

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Speaker 1: It's nineteen twelve. We're at the base of the Eiffel Tower.

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Speaker 1: At the center of a small crowd is Franz Reichelt,

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Speaker 1: an Austrian tailor, aka the Flying Tailor, as the press

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Speaker 1: called him. He was a guy with a mission. It

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Speaker 1: was just nine years after the Wright Brothers had flown

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Speaker 1: the first manned airplane. Aviation was brand new and terrifying.

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Speaker 1: Planes were flimsy, engines were temperamental, and if your plane

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Speaker 1: stalled midair, your only option was basically to plummet to

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Speaker 1: the ground. Franz wanted to save pilots by creating a

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Speaker 1: wearable parachute. It was a brand new idea at the time.

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Speaker 1: His shote looked like a heavy sort of rubber overcoat.

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Speaker 1: Test dummies mostly hadn't worked. He felt a human needed

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Speaker 1: to make the jump from a major height. He wanted

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Speaker 1: to use the Eiffel Tower. His friends pleaded with him

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Speaker 1: not to risk his life, but hey, he was all

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Speaker 1: in so at eight twenty two a m on a

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Speaker 1: cold February morning, as early newsreel cameras were rolling, he

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Speaker 1: climbed over the railing of the Eiffel Tower's first platform,

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Speaker 1: one hundred and eighty seven feet above the ground. He

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Speaker 1: was wearing this contraption that kind of looked a little

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Speaker 1: like Batman. He got an official permission for the test,

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Speaker 1: but only for the use of a dummy. But again,

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Speaker 1: that wasn't his plan. Out on the ledge, he paused,

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Speaker 1: He looked out at Paris. He straightened his mustache, and

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Speaker 1: he adjusted the many flaps of fabric stitched around his body.

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Speaker 1: Franz said absolutely nothing at all, and he stepped off

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Speaker 1: the platform. Well, as you probably guess, the parachute slash

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Speaker 1: coat never deployed. Franz plunged downward, smacking into the frozen

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Speaker 1: earth with a thud. He died on impact. The crowd

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Speaker 1: went silent, the news cameras kept rolling, and the video

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Speaker 1: is still out there. You can see it. It includes

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Speaker 1: a clip of investigators measuring the crater Franz's body left

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Speaker 1: in the earth. Franz Reikeld was ironically a man who

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Speaker 1: had tried to save lives but lost his own in

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Speaker 1: the attempt. And he's not alone. Now we head back

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Speaker 1: to the Civil War. Engineers in those days were obsessed

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Speaker 1: with underwater warfare and Horace Hunley, an engineer, came up

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Speaker 1: with one of the earliest combat submarines, the HL Hunley,

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Speaker 1: and named it after himself. It was a marvel for

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Speaker 1: its time, a hand cranked iron vessel that was designed

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Speaker 1: to sneak beneath enemy ships. Now the problem is it

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Speaker 1: was also a coffin waiting to happen. Its cramped interior

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Speaker 1: was only four feet high and a little over three

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Speaker 1: and a half feet wide. It had no ventilation, no

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Speaker 1: reliable ballast system to raise it out of the water,

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Speaker 1: and almost no lighting, and worst of all, no emergency escape.

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Speaker 1: But Hunley believed in it completely. After two test missions

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Speaker 1: ended in tragedy, killing all crew members, military officials refused

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Speaker 1: to operate it, but Hunley said he would prove its

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Speaker 1: safety by getting on board personally. So on October fifteenth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, Hunley and seven men boarded the sub

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Speaker 1: in Charleston Harbor. It submerged, but it did not resurface.

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Speaker 1: When rescuers finally pulled it out of the water, they

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Speaker 1: found all eight men still seated at their posts, with

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Speaker 1: Hunley himself sitting near the controls, hands on the sub's crank,

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Speaker 1: they were all dead. Despite those deaths, the HL Hunley

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Speaker 1: was refitted, and it later became the first submarine to

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Speaker 1: sink enemy ship in battle when it took out the

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Speaker 1: USS Housatonic, a battle that also destroyed the Huntley and

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Speaker 1: killed its entire crew. Once again, the submarine's creator and

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Speaker 1: first true believer was also one of its victims. Finally,

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Speaker 1: do you love motorcycles? Well, this guy's contraption was one

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Speaker 1: of the earliest ancestors of today's motorcycles. Sylvester Roper was

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Speaker 1: born in the early eighteen hundreds, and he was one

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Speaker 1: of the first people to put a steam engine on

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Speaker 1: a bicycle frame and say, ah, yes, this seems like

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Speaker 1: a perfectly reasonable transportation decision. Roper invented what he called

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Speaker 1: the steam velocipede, basically a prototype for future motorcycles. Imagine

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Speaker 1: a regular bicycle, but instead of pedals, you're kind of

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Speaker 1: sitting on top of a boiler. What could possibly go wrong?

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Speaker 1: It's the eighteen nineties and Ropers in his seventies. Most

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Speaker 1: people see that as a time to relax and observe

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Speaker 1: the world, not get themselves into the thick of it.

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Speaker 1: But Roper was still tweaking, improving, and racing his steam

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Speaker 1: powered bikes. Then on June first, eighteen ninety six, he's

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Speaker 1: showing off his machine to a racetrack crowd in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Speaker 1: The velocipede has a small steam engine strapped between its wheels.

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Speaker 1: It hid speeds that, for that time were absolutely jaw dropping.

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Speaker 1: Folks on hand watched Roper and his velocipede circle the

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Speaker 1: track faster and faster, hitting around forty miles an hour. Now,

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Speaker 1: remember the record speed for a car in those days

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Speaker 1: was around twenty miles an hour. This is eighteen ninety six,

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Speaker 1: and Roper was basically on something he welded together in

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Speaker 1: a shed. Crowds were absolutely amazed. But suddenly Roper wobbles

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Speaker 1: and the bike begins to sway. Not so amazing. It

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Speaker 1: veers off track and crashes. Roper is instantly dead. But

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Speaker 1: was it the crash or a hard brought on by

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Speaker 1: all the excitement. Did the invention kill him or did

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Speaker 1: his own body tap out first? Either way, Sylvester Roper

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Speaker 1: died doing forty on a steam powered ancestor of the motorcycle,

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Speaker 1: pushing either his invention or his body beyond its limits

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Speaker 1: What's interesting with all these inventions is that they were

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Speaker 1: precursors of contraptions we take for granted today the parachute,

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Speaker 1: the submarine, and the motorcycle, and the creators that believed

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Speaker 1: in them gave their lives to prove it could be done.

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Speaker 1: I hope you liked the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please

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Speaker 1: leave a review. I'd love it if you'd subscribe or

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Speaker 1: follow for free to get new episodes delivered automatically. Also

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Speaker 1: feel free to DM me if you have a story

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Speaker 1: you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele

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Speaker 1: and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The

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Speaker 1: Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,

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Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our

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Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.

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Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and

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Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and

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Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the

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Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

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Speaker 1: know you needed to know