William Bullock
Second on the list is William Bullock, an American inventor living in the mid-19th century who’s widely credited as one of the early parents of the modern printing press. In 1863, Bullock created a new kind of printing machine that substantially cut down on the time and labor used in the widely used rotary printing press that had been rolled out to the public roughly 20 years before.
The only problem with this machine—as is the case with just about every machine created back in those days—was that it wasn’t what you would call “safe.” Bullock saw how unsafe his new invention was on April 3, 1867, when his leg got sucked into one of the presses while it was being installed for a local newspaper in Philadelphia. His leg was crushed and turned gangrenous within a week. Just nine days after that initial accident, Bullock died during an operation to amputate his crushed limb.
