- Do you like the idea of inventing something
that would make you a million dollars?
Well, of course you do!
But hey, don't get discouraged
or bogged down by the little details
like actually knowing what you're doing.
That's because some of the greatest inventions of all time
happened without the inventors even meaning to create them.
(explosion booms)
Here are the 10 greatest inventions
that were total accidents.
Number 10 is the slinky.
They walk downstairs alone or in pairs.
But the metal marvel that can entertain children
for, well, minutes if we're being honest,
wouldn't exist if it wasn't for a happy accident
that occurred in 1943.
Attempting to create spring coils
that would keep sensitive and fragile instruments stable
while on naval ships in the choppy waters
of the world's oceans, mechanical engineer, Richard James
really thought that he was on to something
but the United States Navy didn't think so
and decided not to buy his inventions.
However, while perfecting his work,
James knocked one of them off the shelf
and watched in amazement as it walked on its own.
So he quickly introduced it as a children's toy,
first selling it in Philadelphia
where the entire inventory of 400 Slinkies
sold out in just 90 minutes.
Number nine are Post-It notes.
Sometimes amazingly useful inventions
aren't just a product of an accident
but actually a failure.
Just ask Spencer Silver who in 1968,
was working at the 3M company
and researching what made things stick
in an attempt to make an ultra-strong adhesive,
unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you see it,
Silver's experiment failed and he ended up creating
a sticky substance that could be removed
from even paper with little to no effort.
It wasn't until a fellow scientist
used Silver's invention to mark pages
in the book of his church's songs
that the reality of the product's usefulness was understood.
Today we call those sticky little papers Post-It notes
and there are very few people who don't use them.
One product's failure is another's million dollar success.
These things have personally been responsible
for saving a whole lot of my notes
and memories and ideas, thank you 3M.
Number eight are chocolate chip cookies.
(grunting)
There were actually two variations
of how the first chocolate chip cookies were created
but ironically, both were accidents.
In the first version, Ruth Wakefield
was attempting to make chocolate cookies
when she ran out of baking chocolate.
Assuming that semi-sweet Nestle chocolate
would be a suitable substitute, she added it,
only to find it remained separated from the batter
creating regular cookies with chocolate pieces.
In the second version, the head chef at the Toll House Inn,
George Boucher was making sugar cookies
when vibrations made by the mixer
caused some chocolate on a higher shelf
to fall down into the dough.
Now although we don't know
which one of those two stories came first,
what I do know is that chocolate chip cookies
always come first, before any meal or any person.
Chocolate chip cookies.
Number seven is the inkjet printer.
Imagine creating something that revolutionizes an industry
simply by making a mistake.
That's the reality behind one of the most popular
methods of putting what's on a screen on paper.
One day in the early 1950s,
an engineer working at the Canon manufacturing company
accidentally set a hot iron down on a pen.
This resulted in the ink inside heating up
and exploding out from the pen's point.
Realized that somehow this was significant,
the unnamed employee developed that happy error
into a design for the first inkjet printer
and hopefully was well-compensated
by making that mistake by the billion-dollar company.
Today, inkjets are the most commonly used type of printer
and are manufactured by all kinds of companies.
But if it wasn't for an iron and a pen,
that wouldn't be the case.
Number six are potato chips.
Oh this episode is making me hungry!
Not trying to get revenge at someone
who wronged you is still good advice.
However, if everyone followed that,
we might not have delicious snacks like potato chips.
The greasy junk food was actually the result
of a form of revenge that a chef took on a customer in 1853.
While eating at Moon's Lake House,
a restaurant just outside of Saratoga Springs, New York,
an unnamed customer decided
that his fried potatoes weren't crunchy enough.
So after receiving multiple complaints
from the same individual, chef George Crum decided
to give him exactly what he wanted.
So he sliced the potatoes up as thin as humanly possible
and dumped them in hot grease,
salting the rigged pieces generously afterwards.
Assuming that it would bring anger to the customer's face,
Crumb was shocked when he reported that he loved them.
Soon, everybody wanted Saratoga Chips.
Number five is the microwave oven.
While it's now a staple appliance
in almost every kitchen and staff room,
the microwave oven began as an accident
in some guy's pocket, yup.
In 1945, while performing an experiment
using a magnetron, a type of high-powered
vacuum tube found inside a radar,
Percy Spencer discovered a candy bar in his pocket
had suddenly melted, leaving a peanut butter mess behind.
Instead of getting reasonably upset,
Spencer got excited and went to work trying out other foods.
His first choice fittingly being popcorn.
At the time, he was working for the Raytheon Corporation
who quickly used his find to build the first microwave ovens
which they called the Radarange.
Now the first appliances were massive
but by 1967, a much smaller countertop version
was introduced similar to the one that you use everyday.
I wonder how long it took for people to realize
that you can do all kinds of experiments in a microwave.
Just whatever you do, don't put any sort of metal,
including tin foil, it is a spark show.
Number four is the implantable pacemaker.
In 1960, the first patient to receive
an internal cardiac pacemaker
stepped out of a hospital alive and well
thanks to Wilson Greatbatch,
an electrical engineer and inventor
at the University of Buffalo in Getzville, New York.
But believe it or not, this was the result of a mistake.
In the late 1950s, he was building an oscillator,
an heart rhythm recording device
when he grabbed the wrong resistor out of his tool box.
Unaware of his error, Greatbatch completed the machine
only to find after activating it,
the device gave off intermittent electrical pulses
at almost the exact same pace as the human heart.
In the days that followed, he managed to shrink
the accidental pacemaker down
and add protection from bodily fluids
so it could be surgically installed into a person.
Today, more than three million people are alive
thanks to his amazing mistake.
Number three is artificial sweetener.
Diabetics and dieters should thank two things
for their ability to make things sweet,
a research scientist and his gross habit
of not washing his hands.
Yes, the world got its first artificial sweetener
thanks to Dr. Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist
working at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
One day in 1879, he accidentally spilled a chemical
called saccharin on his hands while in the lab.
Thinking nothing of it, he returned home for lunch.
But disgustingly, Fahlberg neglected to wash his hands
and discovered everything that he ate
tasted sweeter than it should.
Sure enough, it was because of the chemical on his hands.
Saccharin became the first sweetener
and the chemist began selling it.
When sugar was suddenly rationed for World War I,
sales skyrocketed, meaning an accident made a guy rich.
But seriously, this was a very rare occurrence,
please don't go around not washing your hands
'cause Matt Santoro told me to.
You're gonna get E. coli.
That's poop in your mouth, your hands are dirty.
Number two are X-ray images.
We owe our ability to see a person's bones
without painful deep cuts to a whoopsie.
On November 8th, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen,
a German physicist and mechanical engineer
was performing experiments on cathode rays,
glowing beams of electrons formed
with the use of vacuum tubes and electricity.
In an attempt to protect his glass tube,
he covered it in black cardboard
only to see a bench across the room light up
in a glowing green light as beams hit it.
Wilhelm named his new discovery X-rays
as X is a substitution in math for the unknown
and at the time was exactly what the rays were.
The first picture ever taken using an X-ray
was of his wife's left hand drawing the words
I have seen my death.
Okay, that's a little dark.
But the find actually won Wilhelm
the Novel Prize in Physics in 1901
and has since then helped save many lives.
And number one is penicillin.
Believe it or not, something that has saved
countless lives around the world for nearly a century
wouldn't have been available if not for a happy accident.
In 1928, Scottish researcher Sir Alexander Fleming
was experimenting with an influenza virus in a lab
at St Mary's Hospital in London, England.
After accidentally and unknowingly allowing
a culture plate to become contaminated,
Fleming left for a two-week vacation
only to find upon his return, a mold growing on it.
It didn't take long for the scientist
to realize that the mold was preventing the growth
of gram-positive bacteria.
Naming his accidental creation penicillin,
Fleming announced that he had discovered
the world's first antibiotic
and subsequently changed medicine forever
which is great although we now also know
that too many antibiotics in your system
will actually create super bugs
and then they're just gonna kill the whole world
and we're all doomed, okay.
So that's it, the 10 greatest inventions
that were actually accidents.
But are you guys aware of any other crazy accidents
that ended up being amazing inventions?
Please leave a comment below
because I like to get a conversation started.
I'm sure this was not an exhaustive list.
Okay, I will see you guys next time, bye!