Accidental Inventions « debdubya.com

Accidental Inventions

Accidentally Invented – Coca Cola

In 1886, a pharmacist named John Pemberton was trying to create a tonic for people who were tired, nervous, or had sore teeth. In a large kettle, he mixed up a medicinal syrup. At first, he mixed it with cold water, and thought it was good. When he went back for more, his assistant has mistakenly mixed carbonated water in the second batch, which made it fizzy – just as it is today. Although it took a while for it to catch on (it cost Pemberton more to promote it than he made off it), eventually Coca-Cola became a beverage sold around the world.

Slow Start

Only 25 bottles of Coca Cola were sold the first year – for a total of $50 (supplies and advertising ran $70).

Lettie Pate Whitehead

1934 – Lettie Pate Whitehead was the 1st American woman to serve as a director of a major corporation, The Coca-Cola Company.

Coca-Cola cure for rust…

Forget those expensive rust removers. Just saturate an abrasive sponge with Coca Cola and scrub the rust stain. The phosphoric acid in the coke is what gets the job done.

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Accidentally Invented – Erasers, Tires, and Silly Putty

Erasers – An English scientist named Joseph Priestley discovered that a wad of rubber was good for erasing (rubbing out) pencil marks on paper. But someone else discovered how to use it in boots, tires, and the like. There was a problem, though. Rubber would melt if it got too hot, and it would break if it got too cold.

Tires – Charles Goodyear worked for several years to find a solution to this problem. Then, one day, he accidentally dropped a some rubber and sulfur on a hot stove and found something that worked.

Silly Putty – During World War II, there was a severe shortage of rubber, so the U.S. government was looking for a way to make synthetic rubber out of something plentiful. They decided on silicone. An inventor at General Electric, Peter Hodgson, added boric acid to silicone oil and developed a gooey, bouncy substance, unsuitable as a substitute for rubber. He began selling it in 1950 as a fun toy known as Silly Putty. Later, astronauts began to use it to stabilize their tools in space. They carried the putty in silver eggs. The toy version is sold in plastic eggs today.

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Accidentally Invented – Ice Cream Cones

Two vendors had their stands beside each other at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. One of the vendors was selling a wafer-thin Persian waffle called zalabia. The other vendor was selling ice cream. It got so hot during the fair that the vendors ran out of dishes for the Ice cream. The waffle vendor rolled a waffle into a cone shape he topped it with some of his neighbor’s ice cream. The ice cream cone was a total hit at the world’s fair.

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Accidentally Invented – Implantable Pacemaker

The Pacemaker was an accident that actually saves lives today. Wilson Greatbatch was working on a device to record irregular heartbeats when he accidentally inserted a resistor of the wrong size. He noticed that the circuit pulsed, stopped, and pulsed again–just like a human heart. He worked with it for about two years and eventually made the first implantable pacemaker.

Before the implantable pacemaker was invented, people with irregular heartbeats had to control their pulse using a sometimes painful external device invented in 1952 by Paul Zoll. The external pacemaker was about the size of a small television, and administered life-saving jolts of electricity, which sometimes burned the skin.

Greatbatch later invented a corrosion-free lithium battery to power the pacemaker.

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Accidentally Invented – Penicillin

Penicillin is famous example of a mistake turned good. In 1928, scientist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold spores had contaminated one of the bacteria samples he had left by an open window. He noticed the mold was dissolving the harmful bacteria. And that’s how we got penicillin, which helps people around the world recover from infections.

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Accidentally Invented – Sticky Notes

Yellow sticky notes (Post-it Notes) were about to be invented in 1968 when a 3M researcher tried to improve adhesive tape. He came up with a semi-sticky adhesive – not suitable for tape, but he thought it could have a use for something else, he just didn’t know what.

A few years later, another 3M scientist was needing a way to keep his bookmarks from falling out of his hymnal while he sang with his church choir. He needed something that would stick without being permanent. He remembered the weak glue his colleague had accidentally created 4 years before. In 1980 the Post-it Note was created.

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Accidentially Invented – Potato Chips

Yes, potato chips were a surprise invention, too. In 1853, George Crum, a chef at a resort in Saratoga, New York, made French-fried Potatoes for a guest. The guest disapproved of the fries and sent them back, asking that they be sliced a little thinner. This happened twice, so the chef go a little miffed, so to get even, he sliced the potatoes very thin and fried them so that the guest would not be able to eat them with a fork. Well, it turned out that the guest was ecstatic about the crisp potatoes. Other diners began requesting them and they soon appeared on the menu as Saratoga Chips.

In the 1920s, Herman Lay, a traveling salesman, began selling the chips from the trunk of his car. Today, everyone’s heard of Lays Potato Chips.

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Scotchgard

Created by a 3M scientist, Scotchgard is a substance that helps prevent dirt from staining fabric. At first, the scientist was trying to make a synthetic rubber to be used in airplane fuel lines. By accident, some of the new substance spilled on her assistant’s canvas shoe, and they couldn’t get it off. As the tennis shoe grew older, it got dingy–everywhere except where the substance had spilled. Three years later, after some trial and error, they had invented Scotchgard.

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Accidentally Invented – Slinky

Who didn’t have a Slinky when they were a kid? If you didn’t have one, I’m sure you at least played with one at some time. Slinkies are part of modern Americana.

The Slinky was invented by accident. In the early 1940s, a spring fell off the desk of a marine engineer named Richard James. It tumbled end over end across the floor. This new invention hit toy store shelves in 1948, and the rest is history.

To manufacture his new creation, Richard James designed and engineered machines to transform 80 feet of wire into a 2 1/2 inch tall stack of 98 coils. Boom, he had a Slinky making machine. Today, the Hollidaysburg, PA, based factory churns out 3 million to 4 million Slinkies a year. Mrs. James came up with the name “Slinky.”

SLINKY SONG

What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs
and makes a slinkity sound?
A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing!
Everyone knows it’s Slinky.
It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky,
it’s fun, it’s a wonderful toy.
It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, it’s fun,
It’s a wonderful toy.
It’s fun for a girl or a boy.

Another Version (which might be the original lyrics):

Who walks the stairs without a care
It shoots so high in the sky.
Bounce up and down just like a clown.
Everyone knows its Slinky.

The best present yet to give or get
The kids will all want to try.
The hit of the day when you are ready to play
Everyone knows it’s Slinky.

It’s Slinky, It’s Slinky
for fun the best of the toys
It’s Slinky, It’s Slinky
the favorite of girls and boys.

HONORARY SLINKY

In 1999, Slinky became one of the very first toys to be officially honored by being pictured on an official United States Postage Stamp.

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Accidentally Invented – Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of the most favorite cookies of all time was invented (accidentally) by Ruth Wakefield, an innkeeper. She was baking Butter Drop Do cookies one day, using a recipe that dated back to colonial times. Wanting chocolate cookies, she cut up a Nestlé chocolate bar and put the chunks in the batter. When she took them out of the oven, she expected to find chocolate-flavored cookies. Instead, what she got were butter cookies with gooey chocolate chips. Aren’t we glad that happened?

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