Being an inventor is a rough field. People will try to steal your ideas, copy what you have done, and ultimately screw you over in every way imaginable. The below is a story about an adding machine inventor found penniless and dead.
Adding Machine Inventor is Found in Potter’s Field
Crossed Sea to Sell Idea, but Met Only Poverty, Hunger and Watery Grave
The tragedy of a well educated Czecho-Slovakian inventor who came to America after the war to sell his invention, an adding machine, but found a grave in Potter’s Field, was revealed in New York yesterday. An inquiry sent by the Consul General of Sweden, acting for Austria, asking the police to search for Alexander Rechnitzer revealed the story.
Just when Rechnitzer landed here is uncertain, but last April he was arrested in Potomac Park, Washington, where he was found wandering about without money or food. He was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital there, where he told physicians he came here to sell his invention to a New York firm, the name of which was not recorded. After some negotiations he went to Washington to take up with the Patent Office the matter of his patent rights. While there his funds became exhausted.
The hospital authorities discharged the inventor on June 22. He returned to New York with practically no money and spent the two following nights at the Salvation Army Hotel.
June 28 a body was found floating in the East River off Whitehall Street. Papers identified it as that of Rechnitzer. The police reported the case to the Czecho-Slovakian Consulate and receiving no reply had the body buried in Potter’s Field.
[Source: The Evening World (New York City, NY newspaper). December 20, 1922.]
