Karl Bryner

Karl Bryner (c. 1874 - March 10, 1914) was a Swiss-born watchmaker who, it was reported in March 1914, committed suicide with a rifle shot, having first tested the weapon by firing it out of a window, striking a passing street car, before turning it on himself, his second shot striking first Bryner and continuing through two partition walls of his apartment. The police investigating the matter attributed Bryner's action to despair over his failure to develop a method of perpetual motion, reportedly based on suicide notes in German that he had written, along with diagrams and research papers at the scene.