Collections · 7 files
Inventions with a dark side
Brilliant ideas that also killed, poisoned or addicted.
None of these stories is simple. The chemist whose fertiliser feeds billions also supervised a gas attack; the engineer who helped take America to the Moon first built rockets with prisoner labour. These files show both sides.
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Fritz Haber
He Fed Billions. Then He Gassed Soldiers.
Fertiliser from his ammonia process supports nearly half the world's population (an estimate). He also personally supervised the chlorine gas attack at Ypres in 1915.
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Wernher von Braun
He Built Hitler’s Rockets. Then Helped America Reach the Moon.
His V-2s were built by camp prisoners; by the lowest count, around 12,000 of them died. His later team built the Saturn V that took Apollo 11 to the Moon.
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
He Built the Bomb. His Country Turned Against Him.
He directed the laboratory that built the atomic bomb, and in 1946 told President Truman he felt he had blood on his hands.
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Mikhail Kalashnikov
He Created the AK-47. Then Asked God for Forgiveness.
He designed the AK-47. Near the end of his life he asked the Patriarch whether he was guilty for the deaths it caused.
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Alfred Nobel
Some Called Him the Merchant of Death
He made his fortune with explosives, then left about 94% of it to the prizes that carry his name.
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Felix Hoffmann
He Helped Create Aspirin… and Heroin.
His lab book records aspirin on 10 August 1897, and eleven days later the drug Bayer would sell as Heroin.
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Thomas Midgley Jr.
His Inventions Poisoned the Whole Planet
His leaded petrol went on sale in 1923. In 1923 and 1924 at least 15 workers died at the plants that made the additive.
