Read on to know about such inventions that were not intended to be what they are today, and were actually invented because of a mistake!
1. The First Practical Implantable Pacemaker
While working as an assistant professor in electrical engineering at the University of Buffalo, he reached into a box of parts for a resistor to complete the circuitry while building a heart rhythm recording device for the Chronic Disease Research Institute there. The one he pulled out was the wrong size, and when he installed it, the circuit it produced emitted intermittent electrical pulses. He associated the timing and rhythm of the pulses with a human heartbeat, after which, he soon began experiments to shrink the equipment and shield it from body fluids.
Talk about luck!
2. Microwave Oven
Percy Spencer was experimenting with a new vacuum tube called a magnetron while doing research for the Raytheon Corporation in 1945. He tried another experiment with popcorn when the the candy bar in his pocket began to melt. When the popcorn began to pop, Spencer immediately saw the potential in this revolutionary process. In 1947, Raytheon built the Radarange, the first microwave oven, which weighed 750 pounds, was 51/2 feet tall, and cost about $5,000. When the Radarange first became available for home use in the early 1950s, its bulky size and expensive price tag made it unpopular with consumers. But in 1967, a much more popular 100-volt, countertop version was introduced at a price of $495.
What would we do without the microwave?
3. Penicillin
The traditional version of this story describes the discovery as a fortuitous accident: in his laboratory in the basement of St. Mary’s Hospital in London, Alexander Fleming noticed a Petri dish containing Staphylococcus that had been mistakenly left open, was contaminated by blue-green mould from an open window, which formed a visible growth. There was a halo of inhibited bacterial growth around the mould. Fleming concluded that the mould released a substance that repressed the growth and caused lysing(breaking down of the membrane of a cell) of the bacteria.
Scientists now suspect that Fleming’s story of the initial discovery of the antibacterial properties of the penicillium mould is inaccurate. With a modern understanding of how the bacteria and the mould interact, scientists know that if bacteria were already present on the petri dish they would have inhibited the growth of the mould and Fleming would not have noticed any mould on the plate at all. A more likely story is that a spore from a laboratory one floor below, run by C. J. La Touche, was transferred to Fleming’s petri dish before the bacteria were added. At the time of the initial discovery La Touche was working with the same mould found in Fleming’s petri dish.
Fleming showed that, if Penicillium rubens were grown in the appropriate substrate, it would exude a substance with antibiotic properties, which he dubbed penicillin.
The only time mould was paid so much attention, perhaps?
4. Ink-jet Printer
When a Canon engineer rested his hot iron on his pen by accident, ink was ejected from the pen’s point a few moments later. This principle led to the creation of the inkjet printer.
If that happened with us, our parents would probably scold us… Well.
5. X-Ray Images
On November 8, 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Röntgen stumbled on X-rays while experimenting with Lenard and Crookes tubes and began studying them.
There are conflicting accounts of his discovery because Röntgen had his lab notes burned after his death, but this is a likely reconstruction by his biographers: Röntgen was investigating cathode rays using a fluorescent screen painted with barium platinocyanide and a Crookes tube which he had wrapped in black cardboard so the visible light from the tube would not interfere. He noticed a faint green glow from the screen, about 1 meter away. Röntgen realized some invisible rays coming from the tube were passing through the cardboard to make the screen glow. He found they could also pass through books and papers on his desk. Röntgen threw himself into investigating these unknown rays systematically. Two months after his initial discovery, he published his paper.
Röntgen discovered its medical use when he made a picture of his wife’s hand on a photographic plate formed due to X-rays. The photograph of his wife’s hand was the first photograph of a human body part using X-rays. When she saw the picture, she said “I have seen my death.”
6. Artificial Sweetener
In 1879, after a long day of working with coal tar, chemist Constantin Fahlberg came home to have dinner with his wife without washing his hands first. While eating his meal, Fahlberg noticed that everything he put in his mouth had a sweet taste, and discovered that the saccharin on his hands was responsible.
Who knew being dirty could pay off so well?