Kazimiera
10-29-2013, 08:33 PM
The 20 most fascinating accidental inventions
Most inventors strive for weeks, months, or years to perfect their products. (Thomas Edison tried thousands of different light bulb filaments before arriving at the ideal mixture of tungsten.) But sometimes, brilliance strikes by accident. Here's a salute to the scientists, chefs, and everyday folk who stumbled upon greatness – and, more important, shared their mistakes with the world.
20. Potato chips
http://www.lowcountrybbq.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/l/o/lowcountry0045_.jpg
The first potato chips were meant as an insult.
Hotel chef George Crum enjoyed a wonderful knack for cooking. From his kitchen at Moon's Lake House near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Mr. Crum could "take anything edible and transform it into a dish fit for a king." That skill came in handy – the upscale Lake House attracted customers who were used to being treated like kings.
In 1853, a cranky guest complained about Crum's fried potatoes. They were too thick, he said. Too soggy and bland. The patron demanded a new batch.
Crum did not take this well. He decided to play a trick on the diner. The chef sliced a potato paper-thin, fried it until a fork could shatter the thing, and then purposefully over-salted his new creation. The persnickety guest will hate this, he thought. But the plan backfired. The guy loved it! He ordered a second serving.
Word of this new snack spread quickly. "Saratoga Chips" became a hit across New England, and Crum went on to open his own restaurant. Today, that accidental invention has ballooned into a massive snack industry.
19. X-ray images
http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2012/0712-accidental-xray/13126752-1-eng-US/0712-accidental-xray_full_300.jpg
In the late 1800s, the world became a seemingly magical place. Scientists discovered radiation, radio waves, and other invisible forces of nature. For a while there, many serious researchers joined seances and believed in ghosts. Science had discovered so many mysterious phenomena – things that the eye could not see but were definitely there – that many people wondered, what else might be out there?
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered one of these invisible powers by accident.
Röntgen experimented with cathode-ray tubes, basically glass tubes with the air sucked out and a special gas pumped in. They work kinda like modern-day fluorescent light bulbs. When Röntgen ran electricity through the gas, the tube would glow. But something strange happened after he surrounded the tube with black cardboard. When he turned on the machine, a chemical a few feet away started to glow. The cardboard should have prevented any light from escaping, so what caused this distant glow?
Little did he know that the cathode-ray tube had been sending out more than just light. It shot out invisible rays that could pass right through paper, wood, and even skin. The lab chemical that lit up – the one that tipped off Röntgen – reacted to these rays. He called the phenomenon X-rays. The X stood for "unknown."
Röntgen went on to capture the first X-ray images, including a shot of his wife's hand (pictured, above). Upon seeing this skeletal image, she exclaimed, "I have seen my own death!"
18. Stainless steel
http://www.wbusinessfinance.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Stainless-steel.jpg
Steel has been forged for millennia, with the earliest known examples reaching back to Turkey in the 18th century BC.
Steel, which is iron with a small amount of carbon added to it, offers some advantages over iron in terms of hardness, ductility, and tensile strength, but, because it's still mostly iron, it rusts. Everything made out of steel will, over time, inexorably transform into a crumbling powder.
Throughout the ages, metallurgists attempted to add other elements to steel to prevent rusting, sometimes with modest success. But there was no reliable way of mass-producing rustproof steel until 1912, when a metallurgist named Harry Brearly from the English city of Sheffield tried to come up with a better gun.
Most gun barrels are grooved – or "rifled" – in a spiral pattern that causes the bullet to spin, increasing accuracy. But the friction between the bullet and the barrel causes wear, eventually making the barrel too big for the bullet. Brearly sought to develop a steel alloy that would resist erosion.
He failed. Again and again. And his heap of steel scraps grew bigger and bigger.
After several months of trying and failing, Brearly noticed that one of his failures had retained its luster, while the others had rusted.
The sample contained about 12 percent chromium, which had reacted with the oxygen in the air to form a thin, protective film. Even when it was scratched, the film would quickly restore itself. Brearly called his invention "rustless steel."
Since the 16th century, Brearly's hometown of Sheffield was known for manufacturing cutlery, and Brearly immediately saw the potential for his new invention. Up until then, most cutlery was made of ordinary steel, which had to be polished frequently to avoid rusting, or silver, which was prohibitively expensive for many people.
Brearly approached his old schoolmate Ernest Stuart, who was a manager at Mosley's Portland Works. After testing Brearly's material in a vinegar solution, he dubbed it "stainless steel," and the name stuck.
The Portland Works building still stands in Sheffield, where it serves as a low-cost space for independent cutlery makers and metallurgists, along with many artists and musicians. Activists in Sheffield are working to prevent the space from being converted into an apartment complex.
17. Plastic
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Plastic_beads2.jpg
Chances are that, right now, you can spot a half dozen plastic items without even having to turn your head. In fact, if you're wearing glasses with lightweight or scratch-resistant lenses, chances are that everything you see is, in a sense, plastic-wrapped.
Leo Baekeland, the Belgian-born chemist who in 1907 developed the first plastic, probably did not set out to dominate your visual field with his creation. His original goal was much more modest: to find a replacement for shellac, a resin secreted by a South Asian scale bug.
Baekeland's "Novolak," a combination of formaldehyde and phenol – an acid extracted from coal tar – failed to catch on as a shellac substitute. But he noticed that by controlling the temperature and pressure applied to the two compounds (using a massive iron cooker that he called a bakelizer) and by mixing it with wood flour, asbestos, or slate dust, he had created a material that was moldable yet robust as well as non-conductive and heat-resistant. He dubbed his invention Bakelite, and referred to it as "the material of 1,000 uses."
He underestimated its potential by several orders of magnitude. In the following decades, Bakelite was used to make electronics components, auto parts, cameras, telephones, buttons, letter openers, clocks, radios, toys, telephone casings, billiard balls, kitchenware, rosary beads, chess pieces, and tens of thousands of other items.
Over the 20th century, Bakelite and its descendants – plexiglass, polyester, vinyl, nylon, polyurethane, polycarbonate, and so on – transformed the stuff that our world is made of, from natural to synthetic. Items that were crafted from wood, ivory, or marble, are now affordable for almost everyone.
Yet at the same time, the ersatz topography that Baekeland brought forth does not always sit easily with us. As everyone who's seen "The Graduate" knows, "plastic" is a powerful synonym for "inauthentic." What's more, most petroleum-derived plastics will remain in the environment for centuries, if not millennia. We've replaced materials that are timeless with one that simply lasts a really long time.
16. Saccharin
http://www.healthandbeautypages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/cbe9caa5_28136890_1cc7_4826_9c3b_0d51e5c22173.jpg
Saccharin came as a sweet surprise – and a scary one.
Before Sweet’N Low and diet sodas, there was a plucky researcher studying something completely different: coal tar.
In the 1870s, Russian chemist Constantin Fahlberg worked in the lab of Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University. Remsen's team experimented with coal-tar derivates, seeing how they react to phosphorus, chloride, ammonia, and other chemicals. (Not exactly the most appetizing profession.)
One night, Fahlberg returned home and started to chow down on dinner rolls. Something was off. The rolls tasted curiously sweet. The recipe hadn't changed, so what was going on here? He soon realized that it wasn't the rolls. It was him. His hands were covered with a mystery chemical that made everything sweet.
"Fahlberg had literally brought his work home with him, having spilled an experimental compound over his hands earlier that day," writes the Chemical Heritage Foundation in its history of saccharin. "He ran back to Remsen’s laboratory, where he tasted everything on his worktable—all the vials, beakers, and dishes he used for his experiments. Finally he found the source: an overboiled beaker."
Fahlberg had actually created saccharin before, but since he never bothered to taste-test his concoctions, the chemist had no idea. In fact, a modern chemist probably would have never discovered saccharin. Nowadays, people thoroughly wash their hands before leaving the lab. If Fahlberg had followed the normal rules of cleanliness, the world would be without this zero-calorie artificial sweetener.
15. Teflon
http://edwardhotspur.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/teflon-pan.jpg
Roy Plunkett invented Teflon while trying to make a better refrigerator.
When the DuPont chemist was only 27 years old, he had a big idea. Plunkett wanted to combine a specific gas with hydrochloric acid. He gathered the desired gas (tetrafluoroethylene) but wasn't quite ready to start experimenting. So he cooled and pressurized the gas in canisters overnight. But when he returned the next day, the gas was gone. The canisters weighed the same amount as when they were full, but nothing came out. Where did all the gas go?
Confused, Plunkett cut the canisters in half. The gas had solidified on the sides, creating a slick surface.
"Rather than discard the apparent mistake, Plunkett and his assistant tested the new polymer and found that it had some very unusual properties: it was extremely slippery as well as inert to virtually all chemicals, including highly corrosive acids," writes DuPont in its corporate history. "The product, trademarked as Teflon in 1945, was first used by the military in artillery shell fuses and in the production of nuclear material for the Manhattan Project."
While Plunkett invented Teflon, he didn't come up with the idea of using it for cooking. About a decade after Plunkett sawed those canisters in half, a French engineer named Marc Grégoire introduced "Tefal" pans, the first to be lined in Teflon. The idea came from his wife. Before Tefal, Grégoire used Teflon on his fishing tackle to prevent tangling. But his wife realized that the nonstick surface would be perfect for cookware.
14. Play-Doh
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Play_dough_04799.jpg
The modeling “Doh,” with the unique smell, that children (and even adults) love to play with was not originally used for fun and games. In fact, it was used for the exact opposite: cleaning.
Before World War II, coal was commonly used to heat homes, which left soot stains on walls. Noah and Joseph McVicker of Kutol Products, a Cincinnati-based soap manufacturer, created the doughy material to rub the soot off wallpaper. However, after the war, natural gas became a more common heat source. As coal was phased out, few people needed Kutol’s cleaning product. The company faced bankruptcy.
In the early 1950s, Joseph McVicker learned that his sister, a schoolteacher, used the material in her classroom as modeling dough. And thus, Play-Doh was born. The McVickers decided to market their nontoxic creation as a children’s toy. In 1955, they tested their product at nurseries and schools. A year later, they created the company Rainbow Crafts.
The “Play-Doh smell” came from the McVickers trying to hide the original cleaning aroma. Many ingredients of Play-Doh are not publicly known, but it is said that the McVickers added an artificial almond scent to the recipe.
In 1956, Play-Doh was first sold at Woodward and Lothrop, a department store in Washington, D.C. It came in only one color – off-white. Colored Play-Doh came out the following year and was sold at more department stores, such as Macy’s in New York. The McVickers became millionaires as Play-Doh ads were broadcast on kids’ shows such as "Captain Kangaroo," "Ding Dong School," and "Romper Room."
13. Mauve
http://www.photos-public-domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/mauve-canvas-fabric-texture-600x400.jpg
Chemist William Perkin wanted to cure malaria. Instead, he started a new movement in the fashion industry.
In 1856, Perkin was an 18-year-old student at the Royal College of London. He attempted to create artificial quinine, an anti-malaria drug derived from tree bark. He was unsuccessful. However, his curiosity spiked when his failures resulted in a thick, purple sludge.
The color caught his eye. The sludge, made with a carbon-rich tar from distilled coal, took on a unique shade of purple, a very popular color in the fashion world at the time. Perkin was able to isolate the compound producing the color, which he named "mauve." Perkin had created the first-ever synthetic dye.
Perkin dropped out of school and his father, George, used his entire life savings to build a factory that produced mauve-colored items. Within a few years, the family became extremely wealthy.
Perkin’s dye was quite vibrant and didn’t fade or wash out, but that’s not the only good thing that came from Perkin’s new color. Mauve helped kick-start a chemistry revolution. Experiments from other labs soon resulted in thousands of useful carbon compounds, such as an actual artificial quinine.
12. Superglue
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Super_Glue_tube.jpg
Eastman Kodak research Harry Coover discovered Superglue years before he figured out what to do with it. At first, its stickiness infuriated him.
Coover first came across cyanoacrylates (the chemical name for these überadhesives) in World War II. His team tried to use the material to create plastic gunsights. Too bad the cyanoacrylates kept sticking to everything. Coover dismissed the chemical and tried different approaches.
He came across the material again in 1951. This time, Kodak experimented with cyanoacrylates for heat-resistant jet airplane canopies. Again, the stickiness got in the way. But then Coover had an epiphany.
"Coover realized these sticky adhesives had unique properties in that they required no heat or pressure to bond," writes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a column from 2004. "He and his team tried the substance on various items in the lab and each time, the items became permanently bonded together. Coover – and his employer – knew they were on to something."
While Coover's original patent called the new invention "Superglue," Kodak sold the adhesive under the less-evocative name "Eastman 910." "Later it became known as Super Glue, and Coover became somewhat of a celebrity, appearing on television in the show 'I've Got a Secret,' where he lifted the host, Garry Moore, off the ground using a single drop of the substance," writes MIT.
11. Silly Putty
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_aE3qBi0TWv4/S72utIMRmuI/AAAAAAAAAIE/Bkrk-X9z3-o/s1600/silly+putty.jpg
You can stretch it. You can bounce it. You can throw it.
The eraser-colored goo was not intended to become one of America’s favorite childhood toys, but actually a synthetic substitute for rubber during World War II. Rubber – used for tires, gas masks, life rafts, and boots – was essential for the war. With Japan attacking many rubber-manufacturing countries in Asia, America was in a pickle. Citizens were asked to donate any old tires, rain boots, coats, and anything else made of rubber.
But it still wasn’t enough. The government reached out to companies to invent a synthetic rubber with similar properties.
In 1943, James Wright, an engineer working for General Electric, entered the scene. Wright just happened to combine boric acid and silicone oil in one of his test tubes, creating the goo that would eventually fill hours of playtime.
The goo could rebound and stretch more than traditional rubber, had a very high melting temperature, and did not collect mold. Although the “nutty putty” didn’t contain the properties needed to replace rubber, Wright hoped there would be some conventional use for it.
However, the government was not interested. Wright sent samples of it to scientists around the country and they, too, were not interested. However, partygoers found the goo very entertaining.
In 1949, a second character entered the scene: the unemployed Peter Hodgson, who saw an opportunity. He borrowed $147 to buy the rights from GE and began producing the goo, which he renamed Silly Putty. He packaged it in plastic eggs because it was close to Easter.
Soon children across the country wanted Silly Putty. Kids could stretch and distort their favorite comic book heroes by slapping the putty down on printed pages. It became one of the fastest selling toys in America’s history.
10. Corn Flakes
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yqrzyI9P7jI/R1Gf0zIisiI/AAAAAAAAAKA/zPYJyMX_Uwk/s1600-R/Corn+Flakes.jpg
Corn Flakes were created (by accident, of course) during a search for good, wholesome vegetarian food. William Kellogg and his brother, John Kellogg, are the masterminds behind one of the world’s most popular cold cereals.
In 1894, John was the chief medical officer of Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which was run based on Seventh-day Adventist health principles of a vegetarian diet. Will worked at the sanitarium as a bookkeeper and manager, but under the guidance of his brother, he became very interested in health and nutrition. He eventually helped John search for new, wholesome diets for patients. The two brothers were in search of an easily digestible bread substitute, which led them to boiling wheat to make dough.
But it never turned into dough. They let the wheat boil for far too long. When Will rolled out the wheat, it separated into large, flat flakes. After baking and tasting, the brothers decided it was a delicious, healthy snack worthy of their patients. “Granose” flakes received rave reviews and patients pleaded for more after they left the sanitarium.
While John started the shipment process, Will had an idea: Try the process with corn instead of wheat. It was a touch-down play. In 1906 alone, the Kelloggs’ company, Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company, shipped 175,000 cases of Corn Flakes, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The brothers experimented with more ingredients, creating Bran Flakes and Rice Krispies. After Will decided to add sugar to some recipes, John left the company, believing that it went against their initial goals. Will renamed the company W.K. Kellogg Company in 1922.
9. Slinky
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljo3edK1Ul1qbxf42.jpg
Like James Wright (inventor of Silly Putty), engineer Richard James researched to aid American troops during World War II. In his home laboratory in Philadelphia, James attempted to invent springs that would support and stabilize sensitive instruments on naval ships during rough seas. One spring was knocked off the worktable and stepped its way down to the floor.
After James watched it re-coil itself and stand upright on the floor, a light bulb went off in his brain.
James showed the stepping spring to his wife, Betty, and said he could make a children’s toy out of it. Because the Navy was unresponsive to the springs, James spent the next couple of years perfecting his toy idea. Betty came up with the name “Slinky” and the couple first demonstrated its toy at Gimbels Department Store in 1945. In just 90 minutes, they sold 400 Slinkys.
Within 50 years, James Industries sold more than a quarter of a billion Slinkys worldwide and the slinking toy is still finding its way into American pop culture.
The Slinky jingle is the longest-running song in advertisement history. It first aired in 1962:
What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it's Slinky.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky. For fun it's a wonderful toy.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky. It's fun for a girl or a boy.
It's fun for a girl or boy!
8. Velcro
http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/blogs/alumni/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/velcro.gif
Many dog owners grumble when their loyal companions play outside and return with all sorts of nature stuck to their fur and feet, bringing the outside environment into their once-clean homes.
But not Swiss electrical engineer, George De Mestral, who, after taking a walk in the woods with his dog, was fascinated by the cockleburs’ ability to cling to his clothes and his dog’s fur.
Under a microscope, De Mestral examined the tons of tiny hooks that line cockleburs and discovered they could easily attach to the small loops found in clothing and fur. He experimented with different materials to make his own hooks and loops form a stronger bond. In 1955, De Mestral decided nylon was perfect and thus Velcro was invented.
Velcro, the combination of “velvet” and “crochet,” was showcased in a 1959 fashion show held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. However, it didn’t receive positive reviews from fashion enthusiasts.
Velcro wasn’t widely used until NASA made it popular in the early 1960s. Apollo astronauts used it to secure items that they didn’t want escaping in their zero-gravity environment. Hospitals and athletic companies eventually used Velcro after realizing the practicality of the material. In 1968, Puma was the first to use Velcro on shoes – Adidas, Reebok, and others followed suit.
7. Vulcanized rubber
http://freddufresne.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/vulcanized-rubber-tire.jpg
In the early 1830s, natural rubber was all the rage, but the excitement faded. People realized that their rubber would freeze and crack during the winter or melt into a sticky, smelly goo during the summer. Natural rubber could not stand extreme temperatures, so its popularity quickly died.
Charles Goodyear spent years trying to overcome rubber's problems, and he only succeeded by mistake.
Goodyear tried various powders to dry up the stickiness, but to no avail. Everything kept melting. These expensive experiments pushed his family into debt and resulted in jail time. Yet even in prison, Goodyear was undeterred from his goal. Some called him a mad man.
According to a biography of Goodyear in Reader’s Digest, he walked into a general store in Woburn, Mass., to show off his rubber products. This time the rubber had sulfur in it to act as a drying agent. Goodyear got so excited that the rubber flew out of his hands and landed on a hot stove. When he examined it, he noticed that it did not melt, but instead charred black. After poking and prodding, Goodyear also noticed that it still had the springy surface texture of rubber, the “gum-elastic” it was known for. Goodyear had made rubber weatherproof.
Another tale tells a different story: Goodyear absent-mindedly turned out the lights to his makeshift lab and spilled his vials and test tubes containing sulfur, lead, and rubber onto a still-hot stove. The result was the same, a charred rubber-like substance that didn’t melt in the extreme heat. After testing in freezing temperatures, Goodyear finally succeeded in reaching his goal, and it only happened because of a careless mistake.
After many patent battles, Goodyear died still in debt. He didn’t start the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. – the American company was instead named in his honor.
"Life," Goodyear wrote, "should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered the fruits. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps."
6. Popsicles
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--P6bTHKuVL0/TeJab7QEh3I/AAAAAAAAGRU/_dwVUVjWjjk/s400/popsicle2.jpg
Kids love Popsicles, so it makes sense that an 11-year-old boy invented them.
In 1905, Frank Epperson from San Francisco invented the Popsicle purely by accident. Epperson made a fruit-flavored soda drink out of powder and water, a popular concoction back then. However, one evening, he never finished making the soda and left it outside overnight – with the stirring stick still in the cup. It was a cold night, and he discovered in the morning that the drink had frozen around the stick. He popped it out of the cup and licked it.
At first, Epperson didn't realize what he had stumbled upon. Seventeen years later, he served the frozen lollipops to the public at a fireman’s ball. (Surprisingly, no one else had come up with the idea yet). They were a huge hit. A year later, he enjoyed even more success after serving them at Neptune Beach, an amusement park in Alameda, Calif., which closed in 1939.
Epperson finally applied for the patent in 1923 and began producing even more fruit flavors. He sold the frozen pops on birch wood sticks and called them “Eppsicles.” They sold for just a nickel apiece.
Epperson’s children apparently didn’t like the name “Eppsicle.” They preferred "Popsicles." Epperson eventually agreed with his kids, and the name has stuck ever since.
5. Chocolate chip cookies
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Chocolate_Chip_Cookies_-_kimberlykv.jpg
If your favorite cookie is chocolate chip, then you should praise Ruth Graves Wakefield for her mistakes in the kitchen.
Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth, owned Toll House Inn in Whitman, Mass. Wakefield prepared the recipes and cooked for the inn’s guests.
One day in 1930, Wakefield had a problem. She was out of baker’s chocolate for her scrumptious Butter Drop Do cookies. Surely, her guests would be upset. Wakefield had to quickly come up with a chocolate substitute and broke up a bar of Nestle’s semisweet chocolate into tiny chunks and mixed them into the batter. She assumed that the chocolate would melt, spread into the dough as it baked, and create a chocolate-flavored cookie.
That, of course, didn’t happen. When Wakefield took the cookies out of the oven, she noticed that the chocolate chunks only melted slightly, holding their shape and forming a creamy texture. The guests loved them.
Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookies began attracting people from all over New England. After her recipe appeared in a Boston newspaper, Nestle gained a huge spike in sales. Everyone wanted Nestle’s semisweet chocolate bars to make Wakefield’s cookies.
And so a marketing deal was struck. Andrew Nestle agreed to give Wakefield a lifetime supply of the chocolate in return for her recipe printed on every Nestle semisweet chocolate bar.
4. Microwave oven
http://www.photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/1700/6159microwave_oven.jpg
It started out more than five feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000. The first microwave, the Radarange, built by Raytheon Corporation in 1947, was based on the accidental discovery of a melted chocolate bar.
Several years prior to Raytheon’s first attempt at the microwave oven, a scientist, Percy Spencer, experimented with a new magnetron, a vacuum tube that releases energy to power radar equipment.
Radar was vital during World War II. It allowed for easier detection of enemy planes and ships, especially German U-Boats. Raytheon scientists looked for new ways to improve the magnetron and increase productivity during a time of great need.
Cooking a TV dinner was not on their to-do lists. It was only by chance – and after the war had ended – that one scientist finally noticed one of the magnetron’s other possible uses.
While working with the device, Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket started melting. He attributed it to the microwaves and, like any good scientist, conducted more tests.
First, Spencer tried corn kernels. After they successfully popped, Spencer tried heating more foods. The results led engineers to attempt to contain the microwaves in a safe enclosure, the microwave oven.
The countertop microwave oven that’s in almost all American kitchens today was first introduced to the public in 1967 by the Amana Corporation (acquired by Raytheon in 1965).
3. Ice Cream Cones
http://www.livingonehanded.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Vanilla-Ice-Cream-Cone.jpeg
The invention of the actual ice cream cone, or “cornet,” still remains a controversial mystery. But what is widely accepted is the cone-shaped edible ice cream holder was indeed an accident.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, ice cream prices dropped and the creamy dessert quickly became a more popular treat. Ice cream street vendors popped up across the US and in Europe. The competition was over more than just flavors, it came down to what they put the ice cream in.
Paper, glass, and metal were common materials used for holding ice cream. Then came the not-so-sanitary “penny licks.” Many vendors would scoop their flavor of the day into a glass and hungry buyers would pay a penny to lick the glass clean before returning it to the vender. Not only was this not the cleanest way to eat dessert, but also customers kept breaking the glass or “accidentally” walking away with them.
In 1902, Antonio Valvona filed the first patent in Britain for an edible ice cream cup. The second came from Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant living in New York. However, these patents covered bowl, not cones.
So where did the cone-shaped ice cream holder come from? Historians agree on the “where” and “when,” but not the “who.”
The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase (though one year late). The food was plentiful, and historians say there were more than 50 ice cream venders and over a dozen waffle stands. With the heat, ice cream was the top seller – hot waffles not so much.
But the waffles proved useful when all the ice cream venders ran out of cups.
The generally accepted story goes likes this: ice cream vender Arnold Fornachou couldn’t keep up with demand and ran out of paper dishes. Ernest Hamwi, a vender next to Mr. Fornachou sold “zalabia,” a waffle-like pastry. Because his zalabia wasn’t selling, Mr. Hamwi decided to help his neighbor by rolling up one of his waffle pastries and giving it to Fornachou who put ice cream in it. Viola, the first ice cream cone sold.
Other venders teamed up as well, each claiming that it invented the idea. With all the hustle and bustle of the World’s Fair, no one really knows who invented the cone first. Many patents were filed after the fair for “waffle-rolling” machines, but many still take the credit for this accidental invention.
2. Post-its
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i0CpzPah220/UDXImvGl_gI/AAAAAAAAA-0/S93xZfCW6Hg/s1600/post-it-notes-and-pins-fd984.jpg
They come in all colors of the rainbow, but the original came in only yellow – and that too was an accident. Post-it Notes are now a must-have tool for many offices, but they wouldn’t exist without a chemical engineer, a church choir singer, and a persistent laboratory manager.
It all started with Spencer Silver, a chemist for 3M, a large manufacturing company. In 1968, Mr. Spencer was supposed to be inventing a strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. However, he accidentally made the exact opposite: a weak adhesive made of tiny acrylic microspheres.
The spheres were nearly indestructible and would stick well even after several uses.
At first, 3M considered Spencer’s invention useless.
Spencer wanted to sell the adhesive as a sticky surface for bulletin boards. He imagined people attaching notes to the board and peeling them off when they were done – no nails or tacks required. The idea didn’t catch on.
Five years later, Art Fry – another 3M chemist and frequent choir singer – invented the Post-it Note in a moment of extreme frustration.
All of Mr. Fry’s paper bookmarks kept falling out! Every time he stood and opened his hymnal, the small slips of paper would disappear into the book or fall to the floor. Fry needed a way to open his hymnal right to the page, without the messy hassle.
Fry had an idea: Instead of putting the adhesive on a bulletin board, put it on the paper. That way, you could stick the paper on anything. He took his idea to Spencer, who of course was ecstatic.
The higher-ups at 3M still weren’t. The product was put on the back burner for another three years.
Fortunately, a laboratory manager named Geoff Nicholson believed in the idea. Mr. Nicholson decided that if 3M’s marketing department wouldn’t back the product, then his lab team would market it themselves. They handed out free samples and 90 percent of the people ordered more Post-it Notes.
Fun fact: According to Nicholson, the standard Post-its are yellow because they first used yellow scrap paper from the lab next door. When they ran out of scrap, they just bought more yellow paper. No one thought to change the color ... yet.
1. Matches
http://www.bashirnavid.com/photo5/match.jpg
For more than 100,000 years, humans have been playing with fire. But no one could create a really easy way to start a fire until a British pharmacist tried to clean his stirring utensil.
In 1826, John Walker was stirring a pot of chemicals when he noticed a dried lump had formed on the end of the mixing stick. Without thinking, he tried to scrape off the dried gob and – all of a sudden – it ignited.
Mr. Walker sold the first strikeable matches at a local bookstore. The “friction lights” were three inches long and came neatly in a box with a piece of sandpaper.
Walker wasn’t interested in patenting the idea, so Samuel Jones copied the matches and sold “Lucifers.” They were a little more practical than Walker’s friction lights. Lucifers were shorter and came in a smaller cardboard box for easy carrying.
The earliest description of a match-like product appears in a Chinese book titled “Records of the Unworldly and the Strange,” by Tao Gu, circa 950 AD. They were called “fire-inch sticks” and used sulfur to start the flame. Still, they were not strikeable.
French chemist Jean Chancel invented the first self-igniting match in 1805. Mr. Chancel’s method involved a wooden splint tipped with sugar and potassium chlorate that was carefully dipped into a small bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Chancel’s method was highly unpleasant and dangerous. The mix of chemicals produced a yellow smelly gas called chlorine dioxide, which explodes when it comes into contact with pretty much anything.
Today, matches are made with non-poisonous red phosphorus, discovered by Johan Edvard Lundstrom. The Diamond Match Company was the first to sell “safety matches” in the US, forfeiting their patent rights to allow all match companies to produce safe matches.
Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/1005/The-20-most-fascinating-accidental-inventions/Matches
Most inventors strive for weeks, months, or years to perfect their products. (Thomas Edison tried thousands of different light bulb filaments before arriving at the ideal mixture of tungsten.) But sometimes, brilliance strikes by accident. Here's a salute to the scientists, chefs, and everyday folk who stumbled upon greatness – and, more important, shared their mistakes with the world.
20. Potato chips
http://www.lowcountrybbq.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/l/o/lowcountry0045_.jpg
The first potato chips were meant as an insult.
Hotel chef George Crum enjoyed a wonderful knack for cooking. From his kitchen at Moon's Lake House near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Mr. Crum could "take anything edible and transform it into a dish fit for a king." That skill came in handy – the upscale Lake House attracted customers who were used to being treated like kings.
In 1853, a cranky guest complained about Crum's fried potatoes. They were too thick, he said. Too soggy and bland. The patron demanded a new batch.
Crum did not take this well. He decided to play a trick on the diner. The chef sliced a potato paper-thin, fried it until a fork could shatter the thing, and then purposefully over-salted his new creation. The persnickety guest will hate this, he thought. But the plan backfired. The guy loved it! He ordered a second serving.
Word of this new snack spread quickly. "Saratoga Chips" became a hit across New England, and Crum went on to open his own restaurant. Today, that accidental invention has ballooned into a massive snack industry.
19. X-ray images
http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2012/0712-accidental-xray/13126752-1-eng-US/0712-accidental-xray_full_300.jpg
In the late 1800s, the world became a seemingly magical place. Scientists discovered radiation, radio waves, and other invisible forces of nature. For a while there, many serious researchers joined seances and believed in ghosts. Science had discovered so many mysterious phenomena – things that the eye could not see but were definitely there – that many people wondered, what else might be out there?
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered one of these invisible powers by accident.
Röntgen experimented with cathode-ray tubes, basically glass tubes with the air sucked out and a special gas pumped in. They work kinda like modern-day fluorescent light bulbs. When Röntgen ran electricity through the gas, the tube would glow. But something strange happened after he surrounded the tube with black cardboard. When he turned on the machine, a chemical a few feet away started to glow. The cardboard should have prevented any light from escaping, so what caused this distant glow?
Little did he know that the cathode-ray tube had been sending out more than just light. It shot out invisible rays that could pass right through paper, wood, and even skin. The lab chemical that lit up – the one that tipped off Röntgen – reacted to these rays. He called the phenomenon X-rays. The X stood for "unknown."
Röntgen went on to capture the first X-ray images, including a shot of his wife's hand (pictured, above). Upon seeing this skeletal image, she exclaimed, "I have seen my own death!"
18. Stainless steel
http://www.wbusinessfinance.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Stainless-steel.jpg
Steel has been forged for millennia, with the earliest known examples reaching back to Turkey in the 18th century BC.
Steel, which is iron with a small amount of carbon added to it, offers some advantages over iron in terms of hardness, ductility, and tensile strength, but, because it's still mostly iron, it rusts. Everything made out of steel will, over time, inexorably transform into a crumbling powder.
Throughout the ages, metallurgists attempted to add other elements to steel to prevent rusting, sometimes with modest success. But there was no reliable way of mass-producing rustproof steel until 1912, when a metallurgist named Harry Brearly from the English city of Sheffield tried to come up with a better gun.
Most gun barrels are grooved – or "rifled" – in a spiral pattern that causes the bullet to spin, increasing accuracy. But the friction between the bullet and the barrel causes wear, eventually making the barrel too big for the bullet. Brearly sought to develop a steel alloy that would resist erosion.
He failed. Again and again. And his heap of steel scraps grew bigger and bigger.
After several months of trying and failing, Brearly noticed that one of his failures had retained its luster, while the others had rusted.
The sample contained about 12 percent chromium, which had reacted with the oxygen in the air to form a thin, protective film. Even when it was scratched, the film would quickly restore itself. Brearly called his invention "rustless steel."
Since the 16th century, Brearly's hometown of Sheffield was known for manufacturing cutlery, and Brearly immediately saw the potential for his new invention. Up until then, most cutlery was made of ordinary steel, which had to be polished frequently to avoid rusting, or silver, which was prohibitively expensive for many people.
Brearly approached his old schoolmate Ernest Stuart, who was a manager at Mosley's Portland Works. After testing Brearly's material in a vinegar solution, he dubbed it "stainless steel," and the name stuck.
The Portland Works building still stands in Sheffield, where it serves as a low-cost space for independent cutlery makers and metallurgists, along with many artists and musicians. Activists in Sheffield are working to prevent the space from being converted into an apartment complex.
17. Plastic
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Plastic_beads2.jpg
Chances are that, right now, you can spot a half dozen plastic items without even having to turn your head. In fact, if you're wearing glasses with lightweight or scratch-resistant lenses, chances are that everything you see is, in a sense, plastic-wrapped.
Leo Baekeland, the Belgian-born chemist who in 1907 developed the first plastic, probably did not set out to dominate your visual field with his creation. His original goal was much more modest: to find a replacement for shellac, a resin secreted by a South Asian scale bug.
Baekeland's "Novolak," a combination of formaldehyde and phenol – an acid extracted from coal tar – failed to catch on as a shellac substitute. But he noticed that by controlling the temperature and pressure applied to the two compounds (using a massive iron cooker that he called a bakelizer) and by mixing it with wood flour, asbestos, or slate dust, he had created a material that was moldable yet robust as well as non-conductive and heat-resistant. He dubbed his invention Bakelite, and referred to it as "the material of 1,000 uses."
He underestimated its potential by several orders of magnitude. In the following decades, Bakelite was used to make electronics components, auto parts, cameras, telephones, buttons, letter openers, clocks, radios, toys, telephone casings, billiard balls, kitchenware, rosary beads, chess pieces, and tens of thousands of other items.
Over the 20th century, Bakelite and its descendants – plexiglass, polyester, vinyl, nylon, polyurethane, polycarbonate, and so on – transformed the stuff that our world is made of, from natural to synthetic. Items that were crafted from wood, ivory, or marble, are now affordable for almost everyone.
Yet at the same time, the ersatz topography that Baekeland brought forth does not always sit easily with us. As everyone who's seen "The Graduate" knows, "plastic" is a powerful synonym for "inauthentic." What's more, most petroleum-derived plastics will remain in the environment for centuries, if not millennia. We've replaced materials that are timeless with one that simply lasts a really long time.
16. Saccharin
http://www.healthandbeautypages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/cbe9caa5_28136890_1cc7_4826_9c3b_0d51e5c22173.jpg
Saccharin came as a sweet surprise – and a scary one.
Before Sweet’N Low and diet sodas, there was a plucky researcher studying something completely different: coal tar.
In the 1870s, Russian chemist Constantin Fahlberg worked in the lab of Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University. Remsen's team experimented with coal-tar derivates, seeing how they react to phosphorus, chloride, ammonia, and other chemicals. (Not exactly the most appetizing profession.)
One night, Fahlberg returned home and started to chow down on dinner rolls. Something was off. The rolls tasted curiously sweet. The recipe hadn't changed, so what was going on here? He soon realized that it wasn't the rolls. It was him. His hands were covered with a mystery chemical that made everything sweet.
"Fahlberg had literally brought his work home with him, having spilled an experimental compound over his hands earlier that day," writes the Chemical Heritage Foundation in its history of saccharin. "He ran back to Remsen’s laboratory, where he tasted everything on his worktable—all the vials, beakers, and dishes he used for his experiments. Finally he found the source: an overboiled beaker."
Fahlberg had actually created saccharin before, but since he never bothered to taste-test his concoctions, the chemist had no idea. In fact, a modern chemist probably would have never discovered saccharin. Nowadays, people thoroughly wash their hands before leaving the lab. If Fahlberg had followed the normal rules of cleanliness, the world would be without this zero-calorie artificial sweetener.
15. Teflon
http://edwardhotspur.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/teflon-pan.jpg
Roy Plunkett invented Teflon while trying to make a better refrigerator.
When the DuPont chemist was only 27 years old, he had a big idea. Plunkett wanted to combine a specific gas with hydrochloric acid. He gathered the desired gas (tetrafluoroethylene) but wasn't quite ready to start experimenting. So he cooled and pressurized the gas in canisters overnight. But when he returned the next day, the gas was gone. The canisters weighed the same amount as when they were full, but nothing came out. Where did all the gas go?
Confused, Plunkett cut the canisters in half. The gas had solidified on the sides, creating a slick surface.
"Rather than discard the apparent mistake, Plunkett and his assistant tested the new polymer and found that it had some very unusual properties: it was extremely slippery as well as inert to virtually all chemicals, including highly corrosive acids," writes DuPont in its corporate history. "The product, trademarked as Teflon in 1945, was first used by the military in artillery shell fuses and in the production of nuclear material for the Manhattan Project."
While Plunkett invented Teflon, he didn't come up with the idea of using it for cooking. About a decade after Plunkett sawed those canisters in half, a French engineer named Marc Grégoire introduced "Tefal" pans, the first to be lined in Teflon. The idea came from his wife. Before Tefal, Grégoire used Teflon on his fishing tackle to prevent tangling. But his wife realized that the nonstick surface would be perfect for cookware.
14. Play-Doh
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Play_dough_04799.jpg
The modeling “Doh,” with the unique smell, that children (and even adults) love to play with was not originally used for fun and games. In fact, it was used for the exact opposite: cleaning.
Before World War II, coal was commonly used to heat homes, which left soot stains on walls. Noah and Joseph McVicker of Kutol Products, a Cincinnati-based soap manufacturer, created the doughy material to rub the soot off wallpaper. However, after the war, natural gas became a more common heat source. As coal was phased out, few people needed Kutol’s cleaning product. The company faced bankruptcy.
In the early 1950s, Joseph McVicker learned that his sister, a schoolteacher, used the material in her classroom as modeling dough. And thus, Play-Doh was born. The McVickers decided to market their nontoxic creation as a children’s toy. In 1955, they tested their product at nurseries and schools. A year later, they created the company Rainbow Crafts.
The “Play-Doh smell” came from the McVickers trying to hide the original cleaning aroma. Many ingredients of Play-Doh are not publicly known, but it is said that the McVickers added an artificial almond scent to the recipe.
In 1956, Play-Doh was first sold at Woodward and Lothrop, a department store in Washington, D.C. It came in only one color – off-white. Colored Play-Doh came out the following year and was sold at more department stores, such as Macy’s in New York. The McVickers became millionaires as Play-Doh ads were broadcast on kids’ shows such as "Captain Kangaroo," "Ding Dong School," and "Romper Room."
13. Mauve
http://www.photos-public-domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/mauve-canvas-fabric-texture-600x400.jpg
Chemist William Perkin wanted to cure malaria. Instead, he started a new movement in the fashion industry.
In 1856, Perkin was an 18-year-old student at the Royal College of London. He attempted to create artificial quinine, an anti-malaria drug derived from tree bark. He was unsuccessful. However, his curiosity spiked when his failures resulted in a thick, purple sludge.
The color caught his eye. The sludge, made with a carbon-rich tar from distilled coal, took on a unique shade of purple, a very popular color in the fashion world at the time. Perkin was able to isolate the compound producing the color, which he named "mauve." Perkin had created the first-ever synthetic dye.
Perkin dropped out of school and his father, George, used his entire life savings to build a factory that produced mauve-colored items. Within a few years, the family became extremely wealthy.
Perkin’s dye was quite vibrant and didn’t fade or wash out, but that’s not the only good thing that came from Perkin’s new color. Mauve helped kick-start a chemistry revolution. Experiments from other labs soon resulted in thousands of useful carbon compounds, such as an actual artificial quinine.
12. Superglue
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Super_Glue_tube.jpg
Eastman Kodak research Harry Coover discovered Superglue years before he figured out what to do with it. At first, its stickiness infuriated him.
Coover first came across cyanoacrylates (the chemical name for these überadhesives) in World War II. His team tried to use the material to create plastic gunsights. Too bad the cyanoacrylates kept sticking to everything. Coover dismissed the chemical and tried different approaches.
He came across the material again in 1951. This time, Kodak experimented with cyanoacrylates for heat-resistant jet airplane canopies. Again, the stickiness got in the way. But then Coover had an epiphany.
"Coover realized these sticky adhesives had unique properties in that they required no heat or pressure to bond," writes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a column from 2004. "He and his team tried the substance on various items in the lab and each time, the items became permanently bonded together. Coover – and his employer – knew they were on to something."
While Coover's original patent called the new invention "Superglue," Kodak sold the adhesive under the less-evocative name "Eastman 910." "Later it became known as Super Glue, and Coover became somewhat of a celebrity, appearing on television in the show 'I've Got a Secret,' where he lifted the host, Garry Moore, off the ground using a single drop of the substance," writes MIT.
11. Silly Putty
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_aE3qBi0TWv4/S72utIMRmuI/AAAAAAAAAIE/Bkrk-X9z3-o/s1600/silly+putty.jpg
You can stretch it. You can bounce it. You can throw it.
The eraser-colored goo was not intended to become one of America’s favorite childhood toys, but actually a synthetic substitute for rubber during World War II. Rubber – used for tires, gas masks, life rafts, and boots – was essential for the war. With Japan attacking many rubber-manufacturing countries in Asia, America was in a pickle. Citizens were asked to donate any old tires, rain boots, coats, and anything else made of rubber.
But it still wasn’t enough. The government reached out to companies to invent a synthetic rubber with similar properties.
In 1943, James Wright, an engineer working for General Electric, entered the scene. Wright just happened to combine boric acid and silicone oil in one of his test tubes, creating the goo that would eventually fill hours of playtime.
The goo could rebound and stretch more than traditional rubber, had a very high melting temperature, and did not collect mold. Although the “nutty putty” didn’t contain the properties needed to replace rubber, Wright hoped there would be some conventional use for it.
However, the government was not interested. Wright sent samples of it to scientists around the country and they, too, were not interested. However, partygoers found the goo very entertaining.
In 1949, a second character entered the scene: the unemployed Peter Hodgson, who saw an opportunity. He borrowed $147 to buy the rights from GE and began producing the goo, which he renamed Silly Putty. He packaged it in plastic eggs because it was close to Easter.
Soon children across the country wanted Silly Putty. Kids could stretch and distort their favorite comic book heroes by slapping the putty down on printed pages. It became one of the fastest selling toys in America’s history.
10. Corn Flakes
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_yqrzyI9P7jI/R1Gf0zIisiI/AAAAAAAAAKA/zPYJyMX_Uwk/s1600-R/Corn+Flakes.jpg
Corn Flakes were created (by accident, of course) during a search for good, wholesome vegetarian food. William Kellogg and his brother, John Kellogg, are the masterminds behind one of the world’s most popular cold cereals.
In 1894, John was the chief medical officer of Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, which was run based on Seventh-day Adventist health principles of a vegetarian diet. Will worked at the sanitarium as a bookkeeper and manager, but under the guidance of his brother, he became very interested in health and nutrition. He eventually helped John search for new, wholesome diets for patients. The two brothers were in search of an easily digestible bread substitute, which led them to boiling wheat to make dough.
But it never turned into dough. They let the wheat boil for far too long. When Will rolled out the wheat, it separated into large, flat flakes. After baking and tasting, the brothers decided it was a delicious, healthy snack worthy of their patients. “Granose” flakes received rave reviews and patients pleaded for more after they left the sanitarium.
While John started the shipment process, Will had an idea: Try the process with corn instead of wheat. It was a touch-down play. In 1906 alone, the Kelloggs’ company, Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flakes Company, shipped 175,000 cases of Corn Flakes, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The brothers experimented with more ingredients, creating Bran Flakes and Rice Krispies. After Will decided to add sugar to some recipes, John left the company, believing that it went against their initial goals. Will renamed the company W.K. Kellogg Company in 1922.
9. Slinky
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljo3edK1Ul1qbxf42.jpg
Like James Wright (inventor of Silly Putty), engineer Richard James researched to aid American troops during World War II. In his home laboratory in Philadelphia, James attempted to invent springs that would support and stabilize sensitive instruments on naval ships during rough seas. One spring was knocked off the worktable and stepped its way down to the floor.
After James watched it re-coil itself and stand upright on the floor, a light bulb went off in his brain.
James showed the stepping spring to his wife, Betty, and said he could make a children’s toy out of it. Because the Navy was unresponsive to the springs, James spent the next couple of years perfecting his toy idea. Betty came up with the name “Slinky” and the couple first demonstrated its toy at Gimbels Department Store in 1945. In just 90 minutes, they sold 400 Slinkys.
Within 50 years, James Industries sold more than a quarter of a billion Slinkys worldwide and the slinking toy is still finding its way into American pop culture.
The Slinky jingle is the longest-running song in advertisement history. It first aired in 1962:
What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it's Slinky.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky. For fun it's a wonderful toy.
It's Slinky, it's Slinky. It's fun for a girl or a boy.
It's fun for a girl or boy!
8. Velcro
http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/blogs/alumni/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/velcro.gif
Many dog owners grumble when their loyal companions play outside and return with all sorts of nature stuck to their fur and feet, bringing the outside environment into their once-clean homes.
But not Swiss electrical engineer, George De Mestral, who, after taking a walk in the woods with his dog, was fascinated by the cockleburs’ ability to cling to his clothes and his dog’s fur.
Under a microscope, De Mestral examined the tons of tiny hooks that line cockleburs and discovered they could easily attach to the small loops found in clothing and fur. He experimented with different materials to make his own hooks and loops form a stronger bond. In 1955, De Mestral decided nylon was perfect and thus Velcro was invented.
Velcro, the combination of “velvet” and “crochet,” was showcased in a 1959 fashion show held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. However, it didn’t receive positive reviews from fashion enthusiasts.
Velcro wasn’t widely used until NASA made it popular in the early 1960s. Apollo astronauts used it to secure items that they didn’t want escaping in their zero-gravity environment. Hospitals and athletic companies eventually used Velcro after realizing the practicality of the material. In 1968, Puma was the first to use Velcro on shoes – Adidas, Reebok, and others followed suit.
7. Vulcanized rubber
http://freddufresne.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/vulcanized-rubber-tire.jpg
In the early 1830s, natural rubber was all the rage, but the excitement faded. People realized that their rubber would freeze and crack during the winter or melt into a sticky, smelly goo during the summer. Natural rubber could not stand extreme temperatures, so its popularity quickly died.
Charles Goodyear spent years trying to overcome rubber's problems, and he only succeeded by mistake.
Goodyear tried various powders to dry up the stickiness, but to no avail. Everything kept melting. These expensive experiments pushed his family into debt and resulted in jail time. Yet even in prison, Goodyear was undeterred from his goal. Some called him a mad man.
According to a biography of Goodyear in Reader’s Digest, he walked into a general store in Woburn, Mass., to show off his rubber products. This time the rubber had sulfur in it to act as a drying agent. Goodyear got so excited that the rubber flew out of his hands and landed on a hot stove. When he examined it, he noticed that it did not melt, but instead charred black. After poking and prodding, Goodyear also noticed that it still had the springy surface texture of rubber, the “gum-elastic” it was known for. Goodyear had made rubber weatherproof.
Another tale tells a different story: Goodyear absent-mindedly turned out the lights to his makeshift lab and spilled his vials and test tubes containing sulfur, lead, and rubber onto a still-hot stove. The result was the same, a charred rubber-like substance that didn’t melt in the extreme heat. After testing in freezing temperatures, Goodyear finally succeeded in reaching his goal, and it only happened because of a careless mistake.
After many patent battles, Goodyear died still in debt. He didn’t start the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. – the American company was instead named in his honor.
"Life," Goodyear wrote, "should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered the fruits. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps."
6. Popsicles
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--P6bTHKuVL0/TeJab7QEh3I/AAAAAAAAGRU/_dwVUVjWjjk/s400/popsicle2.jpg
Kids love Popsicles, so it makes sense that an 11-year-old boy invented them.
In 1905, Frank Epperson from San Francisco invented the Popsicle purely by accident. Epperson made a fruit-flavored soda drink out of powder and water, a popular concoction back then. However, one evening, he never finished making the soda and left it outside overnight – with the stirring stick still in the cup. It was a cold night, and he discovered in the morning that the drink had frozen around the stick. He popped it out of the cup and licked it.
At first, Epperson didn't realize what he had stumbled upon. Seventeen years later, he served the frozen lollipops to the public at a fireman’s ball. (Surprisingly, no one else had come up with the idea yet). They were a huge hit. A year later, he enjoyed even more success after serving them at Neptune Beach, an amusement park in Alameda, Calif., which closed in 1939.
Epperson finally applied for the patent in 1923 and began producing even more fruit flavors. He sold the frozen pops on birch wood sticks and called them “Eppsicles.” They sold for just a nickel apiece.
Epperson’s children apparently didn’t like the name “Eppsicle.” They preferred "Popsicles." Epperson eventually agreed with his kids, and the name has stuck ever since.
5. Chocolate chip cookies
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Chocolate_Chip_Cookies_-_kimberlykv.jpg
If your favorite cookie is chocolate chip, then you should praise Ruth Graves Wakefield for her mistakes in the kitchen.
Wakefield and her husband, Kenneth, owned Toll House Inn in Whitman, Mass. Wakefield prepared the recipes and cooked for the inn’s guests.
One day in 1930, Wakefield had a problem. She was out of baker’s chocolate for her scrumptious Butter Drop Do cookies. Surely, her guests would be upset. Wakefield had to quickly come up with a chocolate substitute and broke up a bar of Nestle’s semisweet chocolate into tiny chunks and mixed them into the batter. She assumed that the chocolate would melt, spread into the dough as it baked, and create a chocolate-flavored cookie.
That, of course, didn’t happen. When Wakefield took the cookies out of the oven, she noticed that the chocolate chunks only melted slightly, holding their shape and forming a creamy texture. The guests loved them.
Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookies began attracting people from all over New England. After her recipe appeared in a Boston newspaper, Nestle gained a huge spike in sales. Everyone wanted Nestle’s semisweet chocolate bars to make Wakefield’s cookies.
And so a marketing deal was struck. Andrew Nestle agreed to give Wakefield a lifetime supply of the chocolate in return for her recipe printed on every Nestle semisweet chocolate bar.
4. Microwave oven
http://www.photo-dictionary.com/photofiles/list/1700/6159microwave_oven.jpg
It started out more than five feet tall, weighed 750 pounds, and cost about $5,000. The first microwave, the Radarange, built by Raytheon Corporation in 1947, was based on the accidental discovery of a melted chocolate bar.
Several years prior to Raytheon’s first attempt at the microwave oven, a scientist, Percy Spencer, experimented with a new magnetron, a vacuum tube that releases energy to power radar equipment.
Radar was vital during World War II. It allowed for easier detection of enemy planes and ships, especially German U-Boats. Raytheon scientists looked for new ways to improve the magnetron and increase productivity during a time of great need.
Cooking a TV dinner was not on their to-do lists. It was only by chance – and after the war had ended – that one scientist finally noticed one of the magnetron’s other possible uses.
While working with the device, Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket started melting. He attributed it to the microwaves and, like any good scientist, conducted more tests.
First, Spencer tried corn kernels. After they successfully popped, Spencer tried heating more foods. The results led engineers to attempt to contain the microwaves in a safe enclosure, the microwave oven.
The countertop microwave oven that’s in almost all American kitchens today was first introduced to the public in 1967 by the Amana Corporation (acquired by Raytheon in 1965).
3. Ice Cream Cones
http://www.livingonehanded.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Vanilla-Ice-Cream-Cone.jpeg
The invention of the actual ice cream cone, or “cornet,” still remains a controversial mystery. But what is widely accepted is the cone-shaped edible ice cream holder was indeed an accident.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, ice cream prices dropped and the creamy dessert quickly became a more popular treat. Ice cream street vendors popped up across the US and in Europe. The competition was over more than just flavors, it came down to what they put the ice cream in.
Paper, glass, and metal were common materials used for holding ice cream. Then came the not-so-sanitary “penny licks.” Many vendors would scoop their flavor of the day into a glass and hungry buyers would pay a penny to lick the glass clean before returning it to the vender. Not only was this not the cleanest way to eat dessert, but also customers kept breaking the glass or “accidentally” walking away with them.
In 1902, Antonio Valvona filed the first patent in Britain for an edible ice cream cup. The second came from Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant living in New York. However, these patents covered bowl, not cones.
So where did the cone-shaped ice cream holder come from? Historians agree on the “where” and “when,” but not the “who.”
The 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis celebrated the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase (though one year late). The food was plentiful, and historians say there were more than 50 ice cream venders and over a dozen waffle stands. With the heat, ice cream was the top seller – hot waffles not so much.
But the waffles proved useful when all the ice cream venders ran out of cups.
The generally accepted story goes likes this: ice cream vender Arnold Fornachou couldn’t keep up with demand and ran out of paper dishes. Ernest Hamwi, a vender next to Mr. Fornachou sold “zalabia,” a waffle-like pastry. Because his zalabia wasn’t selling, Mr. Hamwi decided to help his neighbor by rolling up one of his waffle pastries and giving it to Fornachou who put ice cream in it. Viola, the first ice cream cone sold.
Other venders teamed up as well, each claiming that it invented the idea. With all the hustle and bustle of the World’s Fair, no one really knows who invented the cone first. Many patents were filed after the fair for “waffle-rolling” machines, but many still take the credit for this accidental invention.
2. Post-its
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i0CpzPah220/UDXImvGl_gI/AAAAAAAAA-0/S93xZfCW6Hg/s1600/post-it-notes-and-pins-fd984.jpg
They come in all colors of the rainbow, but the original came in only yellow – and that too was an accident. Post-it Notes are now a must-have tool for many offices, but they wouldn’t exist without a chemical engineer, a church choir singer, and a persistent laboratory manager.
It all started with Spencer Silver, a chemist for 3M, a large manufacturing company. In 1968, Mr. Spencer was supposed to be inventing a strong adhesive for the aerospace industry. However, he accidentally made the exact opposite: a weak adhesive made of tiny acrylic microspheres.
The spheres were nearly indestructible and would stick well even after several uses.
At first, 3M considered Spencer’s invention useless.
Spencer wanted to sell the adhesive as a sticky surface for bulletin boards. He imagined people attaching notes to the board and peeling them off when they were done – no nails or tacks required. The idea didn’t catch on.
Five years later, Art Fry – another 3M chemist and frequent choir singer – invented the Post-it Note in a moment of extreme frustration.
All of Mr. Fry’s paper bookmarks kept falling out! Every time he stood and opened his hymnal, the small slips of paper would disappear into the book or fall to the floor. Fry needed a way to open his hymnal right to the page, without the messy hassle.
Fry had an idea: Instead of putting the adhesive on a bulletin board, put it on the paper. That way, you could stick the paper on anything. He took his idea to Spencer, who of course was ecstatic.
The higher-ups at 3M still weren’t. The product was put on the back burner for another three years.
Fortunately, a laboratory manager named Geoff Nicholson believed in the idea. Mr. Nicholson decided that if 3M’s marketing department wouldn’t back the product, then his lab team would market it themselves. They handed out free samples and 90 percent of the people ordered more Post-it Notes.
Fun fact: According to Nicholson, the standard Post-its are yellow because they first used yellow scrap paper from the lab next door. When they ran out of scrap, they just bought more yellow paper. No one thought to change the color ... yet.
1. Matches
http://www.bashirnavid.com/photo5/match.jpg
For more than 100,000 years, humans have been playing with fire. But no one could create a really easy way to start a fire until a British pharmacist tried to clean his stirring utensil.
In 1826, John Walker was stirring a pot of chemicals when he noticed a dried lump had formed on the end of the mixing stick. Without thinking, he tried to scrape off the dried gob and – all of a sudden – it ignited.
Mr. Walker sold the first strikeable matches at a local bookstore. The “friction lights” were three inches long and came neatly in a box with a piece of sandpaper.
Walker wasn’t interested in patenting the idea, so Samuel Jones copied the matches and sold “Lucifers.” They were a little more practical than Walker’s friction lights. Lucifers were shorter and came in a smaller cardboard box for easy carrying.
The earliest description of a match-like product appears in a Chinese book titled “Records of the Unworldly and the Strange,” by Tao Gu, circa 950 AD. They were called “fire-inch sticks” and used sulfur to start the flame. Still, they were not strikeable.
French chemist Jean Chancel invented the first self-igniting match in 1805. Mr. Chancel’s method involved a wooden splint tipped with sugar and potassium chlorate that was carefully dipped into a small bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid.
Chancel’s method was highly unpleasant and dangerous. The mix of chemicals produced a yellow smelly gas called chlorine dioxide, which explodes when it comes into contact with pretty much anything.
Today, matches are made with non-poisonous red phosphorus, discovered by Johan Edvard Lundstrom. The Diamond Match Company was the first to sell “safety matches” in the US, forfeiting their patent rights to allow all match companies to produce safe matches.
Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2012/1005/The-20-most-fascinating-accidental-inventions/Matches