Top 10 Accidental Inventions and Amazing Discoveries
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01 May, 2012
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Many of the inventions of all times
have been "accidental" inventions. They came about because the person
was doing something else and it just happened or they were working on
another invention and invented another. Some of these on this list are
important medical inventions that have helped save lives or made our
lives easier, some belongs to food and some to fashion. Here is the
list of top ten accidental inventions and discoveries.
1- Penicillin
This was
invented because Alexander Fleming did not clean his workstation before
he went on vacation. When he came back he found a strange fungus on
some of his cultures and the bacteria did not seem to thrive near those
particular cultures. It was the first and one of the most widely used
antibiotics today. This was in 1928.
2- Pacemaker
This was invented
because Professor Wilson Greatbatch put his hand into a container and
pulled out the incorrect object. He was trying to make a type of
circuit to record the sounds of a fast heart and when he put his hand
into the container for a resistor to complete the circuit he pulled out
the wrong one. He was suppose to get a 10,000-ohm but got a 1-megaohm
resistor. This circuit pulsed, stopped for a second, then repeated, and
was the sound of a heartbeat that was perfect.
3- Mauve
Chemist William
Perkin wanted to cure malaria but instead changed the face of fashion.
He was trying to make artificial quinine to cure malaria but instead
made the first every synthetic dye. His dyes were also used to pioneer
chemotherapy and immunology.
4- Radioactivity
William
Becquerel was trying to see if fluorescent minerals would produce X-rays
after being in the sun. The weather was overcast so he put them away
to wait for a sunny day. He looked at the uranium rock he had left in
the drawer and it had imprinted itself on a photographic plate with no
sunlight.
5- Plastic
Leo Hendrik
Baekeland was trying to produce a shellac alternative but instead his
experiment made a moldable material. It could take high temps without
distorting. He first thought it might be used for phonograph records
but found it had many other uses.
6- Vulcanized Rubber
One day
Charles Goodyear accidentally spilled a mix of sulfur, rubber, and lead
onto a hot stove. When he picked up the “accident” he found it was hard
but still quite usable. It is used for tires, to hockey pucks, to
shoes.
7- Teflon
Roy Plunkett was
working to make a new kind of safer chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) because
the old ones was damaging to the ozone system and were being used in
refrigeration. He was trying to get a compound called TFE to react with
hydrochloric acid. He put a bunch of TFE gas pressurized into cans and
when he opened them, the gas was gone. Out of the can came some fine
white flakes which he gave to scientists at DuPont.
8- Coke
Pharmacist John
Pemberton was trying to make a cure for headaches so he mixed together
some ingredients, which is still a secret today, and after eight years
of being sold in a drug store, it was sold in bottles.
9- Smart Dust
Jamie Link was
on a silicon chips for her doctoral work and one burst but she found the
tiny pieces were still able to function as sensors and she called it
smart dust.
10- Saccharin
This sweetener
was discovered because the chemist Constantin Fahlberg did not wash his
hands after a day at work. He was trying to come up with uses for coal
tar. He was eating without washing his hands and the rolls he was
eating tasted sweeter but tasted normal to his wife. This is used as substitute to sugar and used in tea, cakes etc
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