Swindling, murder, and additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing is creating quite the buzz these days. In metal manufacturing, laser- and electron beam-based systems deposit material layer by layer, to create something new or make something old better. The technology isn’t altogether new. Its direct origins go back only to the invention of stereolithography in the 1980s. But you can trace the idea of additive manufacturing back to a patent from the late 1800s by one Joseph E. Blanther, who came up with a way of printing raised maps. Like modern additive manufacturing, his contraption deposited material layer by layer.

But that’s not all Blanther did.

"It would not surprise me in the least to find that Joseph E. Blanther, the alleged Austrian Count—whose career of swindling operations in both Europe and America, has been brought to a climax by the murder in San Francisco—is in Chicago.”

So said a detective to a United Press reporter in 1896. The reporter goes on: “This statement and the gruesome murder in San Francisco recall to the minds of many people who occupy places in the foremost ranks of Chicago society the startling chapters, which were interspersed in the history of the beau monde by the lightning hand of the eccentric Count Von Blanther during the latter’s sojourn here some four years ago.”

Indeed.

People just don’t write like that anymore. This old news clipping shows how strangely history unfolds. Additive manufacturing may eventually change manufacturing as we know it—maybe not for our children, but perhaps for our grandchildren or great-grandchildren. A century from now historians might look back at the history of a process that changed everything, hunt for its origins, and, alas, find a murderous scoundrel.