The surprise is very big when things go “boom!” In a laboratory, sometimes there are more errors than attempts. Check out.
1. Vulcanized rubber
When: 1839
Inventor: Charles Goodyear
The engineer accidentally discovered vulcanization (strengthening rubber with sulfur). After producing a batch of rubber bags that melted in ambient heat, Goodyear cooked some parts to test how resistant the material was. Except that instead of melting, the rubber (whose ink contained sulfur) hardened at high temperatures.
2. Insulin
When: 1889
Inventors: Oscar Minkowski and Joseph von Mehring
German doctors removed a dog’s pancreas to see if that would change the animal’s digestion when they noticed, by chance, that the poor guy’s pee started to attract flies. Examining the urine, they realized that it was full of sugar. So they concluded that the pancreas produces a secretion responsible for the absorption of sugar by the body: insulin, used today to treat diabetes.
3. Super Bonder
When: 1942
Inventor: harry cover
Superglue was created when the chemist was trying to invent plastic gun sights. He and his team ended up with a snot that stuck to everything – a failure. Only six years later, already working at Kodak, Coover decided to turn the goo into an adhesive liquid.
4. X-ray
When: 1895
Inventor: Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen
The German physicist was working with a cathode ray tube covered with thick paper when an assistant noticed that, even covered, the tube illuminated the wall with a green light. Röntgen named this ray that passed through objects an “X-ray”, and later discovered that it could be captured on photographic film.
5. LSD
When: 1938
Inventor: Albert Hofmann
In his laboratory, in Basel, the Swiss chemist was studying derivatives of ergoline, a natural substance found in some fungi, in search of something that would prevent excessive bleeding after childbirth. When handling one of the isolated substances for a certain time, he had to interrupt the work, as he was having hallucinations. The substance was LSD.
6. Penicillin
When: 1928
Inventor: Alexander Fleming
The English biologist was looking for substances that would kill bacteria in wounds. During a few weeks of vacation, he forgot his study material on the table. When he returned, he noticed that one of his cultures had been contaminated with a fungus, and that a substance in the fungus had killed the bacteria. It was penicillin.
7. Viagra
When: 1998
Inventor: pfizer
The pharmaceutical company was testing a new drug against angina, a disease that narrows the veins that supply blood to the heart, but the study was not bringing good results. The pharmacists were about to give up when they noticed that blood flow was being stimulated, yes, just not in the heart…
delicious problems
Many of the goodies and technologies in his kitchen came from small failures
8. Popsicle
When: 1905
Inventor: Frank Epperson
Frank was just 11 years old when he discovered this frozen treat. He was mixing a soft drink at home, when he forgot the glass, with the stick, on the porch. The next morning, he noticed that the drink had frozen with the toothpick in it. The little one had created the popsicle, which was only patented in 1923.
9. Saccharin
When: 1879
Inventor: Constantin Fahlberg
Fahlberg was trying to create a food preservative derived from tar when he discovered one of the first sweeteners in history. One night, he noticed a sweet taste in his meal and remembered that he had not washed his hands after leaving the laboratory. The next day, he returned to the research site and discovered the substance.
10. Microwave
When: [1945
Inventor: Percy Spencer
Spencer was working on a microwave radar in the lab at his company, Raytheon, when he noticed that the device seemed to emit heat. He immediately tested the principle on a chocolate bar, which melted. After testing, Spencer used the principle to create a new type of oven.
11. Chocolate chip cookies
When: 1930
Inventor: Ruth Wakefield
Ruth was in charge of the kitchen at the inn she maintained in the USA. One day, making cookies, she noticed that she was out of cocoa powder. She used pieces of the candy bar in the hope that they would melt and blend into the dough. She didn’t roll: when she took the cookies out of the oven, she had invented chocolate chip cookies.
12. Matchstick
When: 1826
Inventor: john walker
While researching a practical way to obtain fire and transfer it to a flammable material, the English chemist noticed that one of the sticks he was using to stir a mixture caught fire when it was accidentally scraped against the stone floor. This is how the friction matchstick came about.
13. Teflon
When: 1938
Inventor: Roy J. Plunkett
The chemist carried out experiments with gases for refrigeration. But the experiment didn’t go as planned and, by chance, the sample turned into a substance in which almost nothing stuck. The American military was the first to use the product: they coated pipes and seals with Teflon to be able to produce radioactive material for the atomic bomb.
14. Breakfast cereal (flakes type)
When: 1894
Inventors: brothers John Harvey Kellogg and Will Keith Kellogg
The Kellogg brothers discovered the process of creating flake cereal by accident. They let a wheat dough sit too long and the mixture dried out. Instead of throwing the product away, they pressed the dough trying to make bread sheets. They got flakes, which when baked became a wheat-flavored “prototype” of corn flakes.
15. Coke
When: 1886
Inventor: John Pemberton
The formula for the most famous soft drink in the world is secret, but Pemberton’s goal when he mixed various ingredients (including coca leaves and kola nuts) was to create a remedy for headaches. The drink was sold as a tonic, in an Atlanta pharmacy, and only became the soda we know after 1899.
16. Potato Chips
When: 1853
Inventor: George Crum
The chef at the Moon’s Lake Hotel in New York was annoyed by a customer who complained that his fries were soggy and decided to screw him over. He cut the tubers as thinly as possible and fried them. What was supposed to be a provocation became a hit: the customer loved it.
SOURCES Websites Goodyear, pfizer, Kellogg, Women Inventors, Coke, boston herald, Raytheon It is History Channel