Answer: Robot

In July of 1984 Harry Allen, a worker at the Diecast Corporation in Jackson, Michigan, entered into the history books for a most unfortunate reason. One of his coworkers found him in the mid-afternoon pinned between a support beam and the arm of an industrial robot. Allen had entered a restricted area of the factory floor and been inadvertently knocked over and pinned by the robot.

The director of manufacturing was able to override the robot’s program and move the arm to free Allen, who was unconscious and in a state of cardiac arrest. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he died five days later from complications of the accident and subsequent cardiac arrest. Allen was the first robot-related fatality in the United States.