10 Things discovered by accident
1. The Microwave Oven
During
World War II, two scientists invented the magnetron, a tube that produces
microwaves. It was during a radar-related research project around 1946 that Dr.
Percy Spencer, a self-taught engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, was
testing a new type of magnetron when he discovered that the candy bar in his
pocket had melted. This intrigued Dr. Spencer, so he tried another experiment.
This time he placed some popcorn kernels near the tube and the popcorn popped
all over his lab. Spencer decided to put the magnetron tube near an egg, which
also cooked. The scientist thought if popcorn and a egg can be cooked that
quickly, why not other foods? In 1947, Raytheon built the Radarange, the first
microwave oven in the world. It was almost 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, weighed 750
pounds (340 kg) and cost close to $5,000. It was water-cooled, so also required
built-in plumbing.
2. Ice Cream Cones
Before
1904, ice cream was served on dishes. It wasn’t until the World’s Fair of that
year, held in St Louis, Missouri, that two seemingly unrelated food items were
paired. It happened that the weather during the event was very hot, and given
the combination of temperature and crowds, a stall selling ice cream quickly
ran out of dishes. The neighbouring stall was selling a type of wafer waffle –
and since his business was lagging he offered to help out the overly busy ice
cream vendor. The spontaneous innovation was to roll his Zalabia into cone
shapes and place the ice cream on top, which was an instant hit. This may be
legend to a certain, as it was known that edible cones were being served in
England prior to the 1904 World’s Fair.
3. Champagne
Although
Dom Perignon did not invent Champagne, he did develop many advances in
production of the drink, including holding the cork in place with a wire collar
to withstand the fermentation pressure. In France, the first sparkling
Champagne was created accidentally; its pressure led it to be called “the
devil’s wine” as bottles exploded or the cork jolted away.
4. Potato chips/crisps
During
one summer of 1853, Chef George Crum of Moon Lake Lodge Restaurant, in Saratoga
Springs, New York, prepared the regular French-fried potatoes for a fastidious
dinner guest who promptly rejected them for being too thick. Chef Crum served
that diner with a thinner batch which was also rejected. Annoyed and
exasperated, the chef decided to get back at the tough diner by making the
potatoes so thin and crisp that even the fork could not skewer them. Instead of
riling that diner, the paper-thin and crispy potato slices appealed to that
diner so much he requested for more. Soon, all the other diners began to
request for the paper-thin and crispy potato chips and they became a regular,
house specialty item called Saratoga Chips on the menu. The popularity of the
paper-thin potato chips grew quickly and soon it was packaged and sold as a
portable convenience food. Eventually, Chef Crum opened his own chips
restaurant.
5. The Slinky
Like
Silly Putty, the Slinky was an accidental by-product of World War II research
and development transformed into a hugely successful children’s toy. In 1943,
engineer Richard James of greater Philadelphia was working in his home
laboratory to invent a set of springs that could be used to support sensitive
instruments on board ships and stabilize them even in rough seas. When he once
accidentally knocked one of his springs off a shelf, James saw that, rather
than flopping in a heap onto the floor, the spring “stepped” in a series of
arcs from the shelf, to a stack of books, to a tabletop, to the floor, where it
re-coiled itself and stood upright. He and his wife, who is credited with
coming up with the name “Slinky”, founded James Industries, in Hollidaysburg,
Pennsylvania, to market their product. Richard invented machines that could
coil 80 feet of steel wire into a Slinky in about 10 seconds. By the time of
its 50th anniversary (1995), that same company, using those same machines, had
sold over a quarter of a billion Slinkys, all over the world. While the toy is
cool, it can be argued that the real invention was the machine that can take 80
feet of steel wire and coil it into a Slinky in 10 seconds. Now that’s an
invention.
6. The Pacemaker
Canadian,
John Hopps invented the first cardiac pacemaker. Hopps was trained as an
electrical engineer at the University of Manitoba and joined the National
Research Council in 1941, where he conducted research on hypothermia. While
experimenting with radio frequency heating to restore body temperature, Hopps
made an unexpected discovery: if a heart stopped beating due to cooling, it
could be started again by artificial stimulation using mechanical or electric
means. This lead to Hopps’ invention of the world’s first cardiac pacemaker in
1950. His device was far too large to be implanted inside of the human body. It
was an external pacemaker.
7. The Popsicle
In
1905, the Popsicle was invented by an 11 year-old Frank Epperson. He had left
his fruit flavoured soda outside on the porch with a stir stick in it. The
drink froze overnight, and the next morning he discovered the frozen treat. He
originally called it the “Epsicle” (no relation to the Epilady), which his
children later re-named to the more palatable “Popsicle.” [Image credit: John
Coulter]
8. Brandy
Medieval
wine merchants used to boil the H20 out of wine so the cargo would keep better
and take up less space at sea. Removing the water also made the load less
expensive to ship, since tax was assessed by volume. Legend has it that the
intent was to add the water removed by distillation back to the brandy before
consumption, essentially to turn it back into wine, but after having been
stored in wooden casks, the resulting product had improved over the original
distilled spirit.
9. LSD
Wow
man. The unintentional discovery of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate-LSD-25
took place in 1938 by Swiss scientist Albert Hoffman. The actual discovery of
LSD as a hallucinogen occurred when Dr Hoffman was involved in pharmaceutical
research in Basel, Switzerland, hoping to produce drugs that would help ease
the pain of childbirth. Having synthesized what would later become known as
LSD; Hoffman catalogued the untested substance and placed it in storage, after
finding nothing particularly interesting about it during the initial analysis.
Five years later Hoffman discovered the true properties of the compound after
inadvertently absorbing a dose of it when handling the chemical at work without
wearing gloves. On his bicycle ride back home he observed “an uninterrupted
stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic
play of colours”. Early researcher Dr Richard Alpert claimed to have
administered LSD to 200 test subjects by 1961, and reported that 85% of his
test subjects said that the experience was the “most educational” of their
lives. Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was
under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of
DNA nearly 50 years ago.
10. X-Rays
Wilhelm
Roentgen, Professor of Physics in Worzburg, Bavaria, was the first person to
discover the possibility of using electromagnetic radiation to create what we
now know as the x-ray. Roentgen was exploring the path of electrical rays
passing from an induction coil through a partially evacuated glass tube.
Although the tube was covered in black paper and the room was completely dark,
he noticed that a screen covered in fluorescent material was illuminated by the
rays. He later realised that a number of objects could be penetrated by these
rays, and that the projected image of his own hand showed a contrast between
the opaque bones and the translucent flesh. He later used a photographic plate
instead of a screen, and an image was captured. For the first time ever the
internal structures of the body could be made visible without the necessity of
surgery. The first image created by his x-ray Roentgen was an image of his
wife’s hand, noted by the wedding ring
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