Inventing By Accident
1. Viagra. Men being treated for erectile dysfunction should salute the working stiffs of Merthyr Tydfil, the Welsh hamlet where, in 1992 trials, the gravity-defying side effects of a new angina drug first popped up.
2. X-rays. Several 19th-century scientists toyed with the penetrating rays emitted when electrons strike a metal target. But the x-ray wasn’t discovered until 1895, when German egghead Wilhelm Röntgen tried sticking various objects in front of the radiation – and saw the bones of his hand projected on a wall.
3. Artificial sweeteners. Speaking of botched lab jobs, three leading pseudo-sugars reached human lips only because scientists forgot to wash their hands. Cyclamate (1937) and aspartame (1965) are byproducts of medical research, and saccharin (1879) appeared during a project on coal tar derivatives.
4. Microwave ovens.Microwave emitters (or magnetrons) powered Allied radar in WWII. The leap from detecting Nazis to nuking nachos came in 1946, after a magnetron melted a candy bar in Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer’s pocket.
5. Brandy. Medieval wine merchants used to boil the water out of wine so their delicate cargo would keep better and take up less space at sea. Before long, some intrepid soul – our money’s on a sailor – decided to bypass the reconstitution stage, and brandy was born.
6. Potato chips. Chef George Crum concocted the perfect sandwich complement in 1853 when – to spite a customer who complained that his fries were cut too thick – he sliced a potato paper-thin and fried it to a crisp. Needless to say, the diner couldn’t eat just one.
7. Silly Putty. In the early 1940s, General Electric scientist James Wright was working on artificial rubber for the war effort when he mixed boric acid and silicon oil. V-J Day didn’t come any sooner, but comic strip image-stretching practically became a national pastime.
Photo by Goodsofevanston.com.
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