The world is full of fantastic inventions and creations. But did you know some of them were invented or created by accident? In this blog, we take a look at some of the things we use that were invented by a complete accident.
The slinky
Naval engineer Richard James was trying to create a spring that would keep equipment steady on ships as they travelled oversea.
Whilst experimenting he knocked a prototype off a ledge and enjoyed the effect it made.
He showed it to his wife, Betty, and she developed it into a toy which would go on to feature on staircases around the world.
play-doh
Do you know what I love? Play-doh, but did you realise it was invented by accident?
Play-doh started life as a product to clean coal residue from wallpaper but after the Second World War lots of homes started to move from coal to gas to heat their homes. Fewer coal fires meant a product created to clean coal residue was less in demand.
In order to save the company, Joseph McVicker learnt from his sister-in-law that the wallpaper cleaner could be used for modelling projects.
Kay Zufall (the sister-in-law) tested it with students in the nursery school she taught at, and thus Play-doh was born.
Penicillin
Dr Alexander Fleming, the famous Scottish bacteriologist, forgot to clean up after himself so when he returned to the lab after a holiday, at first, found a mess waiting for him.
He’d left out some Staphylococcus aureus (stuff that causes boils) cultures in the lab. (Going to presume they were in dishes rather than just left on the table). As he made to throw them away he saw that some of the Staphylococcus aureus had died.
He looked closer and discovered that a fungus, which had grown, was destroyed the bacteria. That fungus was called Penicillium notatum.
Howard Walter Florey and Sir. Ernst Boris Chaim helped develop the fungus for general use.
Fleming called it Penicillin and it was the first antibiotic discovered and all because Fleming was too lazy to clean up before he went on holiday.
The post-it note
Dr Spencer Silver had one mission. Create the strongest adhesive (glue) the world had ever seen. It went wrong and he ended up making a weak adhesive instead.
Silver and his colleagues desperately tried to think of how they could use the weak adhesive, but ideas were initially limited.
One colleague, Arthur Fry, came up with the idea of using the adhesive on a bookmark to stick to the paper as he was fed up with his bookmark falling out of his books. They developed a bookmark but after more thought they decided to shift the design to what we now know as the post-it note.
Choclate chip cookies
Ruth Wakefield was creating a batch of delicious chocolate cookies when she realised, to her horror, she was out of baker’s chocolate.
She decided to break up sweetened chocolate into small pieces and toss them into the cookie dough, expecting the sweetened chocolate to melt, so she would still end up with chocolate cookies.
The sweetened chocolate pieces didn’t melt, however, so the chocolate chip cookie was born.
The ice cream cone
Speaking of things that were invented when someone ran out of something.
Arnold Fornachou ran out of cups to serve ice cream in on an incredibly warm day at the 1904 World Fair at St Louis, Missouri.
Ice cream was cheap enough for everyone to afford but not many people could afford a glass cup to eat it in. As an answer, ice cream vendors would give the customer a glass cup with ice cream in it. The customer would eat the ice cream and lick the cup clean and then give it back to the vendor. These cups were often stolen or accidentally dropped.
On this day in 1904, Fornachou turned to a Syrian man named Ernest Hamwi who was on the stall next to him trying to sell hot waffles. Hamwi came to Fornachous’s rescue by rolling up one of his waffles into a funnel shape to put ice cream in.
That waffle became the first edible ice cream cone.
Which of the accidentally invented things in the blog is your favourite? Let me know in the comments below.