• From wallpaper cleaner turned into a children's toy to laughing gas that nobody knew could
stop you from feeling pain, we count 15 innovative creations created by the craziest of accidents
15 - Potato Chips, • A creation that only became reality when
a chef in upstate New York called George Crum had a customer continually sending back his
plate of fried potatoes, claiming they weren't satisfactory
• George got so fed up that he thinly sliced the potatoes and deep fried them until they
were crispy - simply to spite the customer, but in a bizarre twist, the customer LOVED
the potato chips and asked for more • After that, potato chips suddenly became
a huge thing in the snack industry, simply because a chef was pissed off at an annoying
customer 14 - Corn Flakes,
• 1984, the Kellogg brothers ran a hospital and health spa in Michigan in which they advised
clients to abstain from meat, alcohol, tobacco and a whole manner of things deemed unhealthy
at the time • They substituted caffeine in coffee with
granola, and one day when cooking some wheat they were called away only to come back and
find the wheat stale - but they still put it through the rollers
• Out came wheat berry flattened into thin flakes, paving the way for the cereal we know
today as corn flakes • Later the company would shy away from
the "healthy" breakfast line-up to focus on outdoing the sugar-filled competition with
Honeycomb and Waffle Crisp Corn Flake flavours 13 - Play-Doh,
• It was originally a wallpaper cleaner, a successful one at that, but after people
stopped using coal to heat their homes in the mid-20th century, wallpaper stayed clean
• The owner of the company quickly though up an alternative to their product with help
from his sister-in-law - to market it as modelling clay for children
• They took out the detergent ingredient, added a pleasant scent and a variety of colours
and Play-Doh became what we know today 12 - Chocolate Chip Cookies,
• 1930, a woman was baking a chocolate dessert when she realised she'd run out of traditional
chocolate - to substitute, she dumped in Nestle chocolate chips
• To her shock, the chocolate chips didn't melt into the cookie, but stayed relatively
solid - her initial disappointment gave way a few years later when Nestle offered a deal
to use her company name in a line of the world's first chocolate chip cookies known as Semi-Sweet
Chocolate Morsels • The recipe went on to become a staple
in restaurants and kitchens across the globe 11 - Velcro,
• 1950s, A Swiss man named George de Mestral walking through the countryside, annoyed that
those little sticky plants known as cockleburs were all over his clothes
• He got home and took out a microscope only to find these things actually had microscopic
hooks which latched onto the fabric of his clothes
• He then took this information and devised a material that might be used to keep things
easily stuck together without adhesive or tightness - hence the idea of Velcro was born
10 - X-Rays, • In the era of developing knowledge on
invisible rays such as radio waves and radiation, one physicist discovered that when he pumped
electricity through a special light bulb tube, a chemical a few feet away would glow
• He realised that the tube was sending out invisible rays that could penetrate paper,
wood and even skin - he called them X-Rays, the "x" meaning "unknown"
• The first x-ray image was of the bone in his wife's hand, and upon viewing the image,
she cried out "I have seen my own death" 9 - Penicillin,
• Before this discovery and the age of anti-biotics, common illnesses were rampant and lethal - the
average life expectancy was hardly above the age of 50
• In 1928.
Alexander Fleming left town for a while and came back to find his petri dishes were full
of mould and contamination • One container drew his eye though - though
it was covered in bacteria, in one area was a blob of mould - around the mould, an area
free of bacteria as if the mould were blocking it from approaching
• The contents of this petri dish could be used to kill a huge amount of bacteria
- hence the discovery of penicillin 8 - Plastic,
• If it weren't for two accidents, it's possible we'd be using clay and eggs mixed
with animal blood as a water bottle • But Charles Goodyear of Goodyear Tires
combined rubber and sulfur and accidentally placed it on a stove - where it merged to
form a strong and durable material we know today as plastic
• Whereas in an unrelated incident, in a contest to find a replacement for elephant
ivory in billiard balls, John Wesley Hyatt spilled a bottle of collodion where it dried
up to form plastic • By the year 1872, his creation became
the first commercially successful plastic 7 - Super Glue,
• A researcher at Kodak called Harry Coover experimenting with plastic lenses for gun
sights when he stumbled on an extra sticky adhesive made from synthetic materials
• He thought nothing of it at the time, but almost 10 years later one of his assistants
rediscovered it while accidentally sticking a couple of prisms together
• Harry realised the market potential, so he decided to take it further and commercialise
it, the title: Super Glue 6 - Anaesthesia,
• We're all thankful for this one, the so-called "laughing gas" used to inhibit pain during
surgery - it was in the 1800s that inhaling the gas was more of a social event referred
to as a "laughing party" or "ether frolic" • In 1844, Horace Wells saw a man with an
injured leg while under the influence of the laughing gas, to which the man claimed he
didn't feel any pain • Following this, Horace used the gas to
help him remove a tooth, to which he and some colleagues realised they could use in the
wider field of dentistry • Over the years it took off and became
a staple of the medical industry 5 - Tea,
• A very old recipe from thousands of years ago which, if legend would have us believe,
saw a Chinese emperor named Shennong boiling his drinking water in a cauldron
• One windy day some leaves from a nearby tea bush blew into the water without his knowledge
and turned it a light brown • Most would tip out the water and start
again, but since Shennong understood herbalism he decided to risk a taste, only to discover
it tasted nice - and thus tea became a thing 4 - Matches,
• For 10s of thousands of years starting a fire has always been a chore, but in 1826
John Walker discovered a curious recipe for a strikable 3-inch long match
• He was stirring a pot of chemicals when a dried lump formed at the end of the mixing
stick, and when he tried to scrape it off, it ignited
• He sold miniature versions of them at his local bookstore, but because he hadn't
patented the idea someone else came along to steal the idea - eventually these "friction
sticks" became the safety matches we know today
3 - Viagra, • Two researchers at a pharmacy were experimenting
with a new drug they hoped would treat high blood pressure and heart disease, and in the
late 1980s they moved on to human trials • Though the drug wasn't effect, the side
effects lead them down an entirely different industry - most of the test subjects reported
they got massive erections that wouldn't go away
• A new clinical trial was conducted, this time with the aim to treat erectile dysfunction,
and in 1998 viagra was finally approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration
2 - Ice Cream Cone, • This is a widely accepted mystery - during
the late 1800s, street vendors couldn't decide on what container they should use for ice-cream,
whether it be paper, glass or metal • In 1902, two people filed patent for edible
bowls for their ice-cream, but it was in 1904 at the World's Fair that ice-cream quickly
sold out, the waffle stands weren't doing so good so they started combining the two
to increase sales • Wrapping up waffles and putting ice cream
on top - after the fair, hundreds of people all applied for the patent all at once, but
nobody truly knows who was the first one 1 - Microwave Oven
• Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon was doing radar research with a vacuum tube
when he noticed something melting in his pocket • His candy bar seemed to be cooking where
he stood - so Percy decided to test this notion of invisible waves cooking food by throwing
in some popcorn kernels • Every one of them popped, the idea was
miniaturised and placed in pretty much every kitchen around the world