7 inventions that were made by accident
Miscellaneous / / April 25, 2023
It is simply impossible to imagine modern life without them.
1. Microwave
In 1945, Percy Spencer, a self-taught American engineer from Maine, was hired by the Raytheon Technologies Corporation. There he was to develop active radars for the US government.
And somehow a man noticedthat the microwaves from his experimental apparatus melted the candy bar in his pocket. Percy realized that this effect would be more interesting than finding any aircraft.
Spencer placed popcorn next to the magnetron tube, and it heated up until it crunched. I put an egg in and it exploded.
Percy and his assistant Raleigh Hanson done a metal box, they put a magnetron in it - and it became the world's first microwave oven. They ironically named the project Speedy Weenie (“Quick sausage”).
Raytheon appreciated the idea of its employee: the bosses realized that in the consumer electronics sector, as a result, it would be possible to earn more than in the military.
The first microwave ovens were almost the size of a gas stove, connected to the water supply, as they were liquid-cooled, and had little popularity. But as soon as they figured out how to reset the temperature of the magnetron using air, the invention made a splash. As a result, in 1975, microwave ovens in America overtook gas stoves in sales.
2. Velcro
In 1941, the Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral went on a campaign in the Alps with his dog. And when he returned discoveredthat the dog has all the wool in burrs.
Another person would clean the pet and forget about this unfortunate misunderstanding. But de Mestral had the mind of an inventor, so he tore off a few thorns and went to examine them under a microscope. Then he looked at his pants - also covered in burrs - and decided to create a material that would cling to everything just as well.
Georges experimented for nine years until he noticed that nylon threads in synthetic fabric, when cut, form the same hooks as those of burdock. It took another year to invent a loom that would create these mini-hooks automatically. And in 1951, de Mestral finally patented his invention.
True, at first it was not very popular, because the fabric looked unattractive. But in the early 1960s, de Mestral invited at NASA to help design spacesuits for astronauts, and there he was able to ensure that Velcro was not only functional, but also stylish.
As a result, suit manufacturers began to buy fabric for skiers, divers and sailors. Georges opened textile centers in Germany, Switzerland, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, the USA and Canada, and the invention made him rich.
Now Velcro is found literally everywhere: on clothes and shoes, in medical devices and even on laptop charging cables. And all this because of de Mestral's dog, which, back in 1941, took it into his head to climb into a burdock bush.
3. Saccharin
Saccharin, one of the world's most popular artificial sweeteners, almost no calories, but at the same time 400 times sweeter than sugar. He was discovered in 1878 by the German chemist Konstantin Fahlberg, who was working on the analysis of coal tar at Johns Hopkins University.
Once a man washed his hands badly after work and when he came home, he found that his fingers were sweet. He returned to the laboratory and... began to taste all the more or less safe chemical compounds with which he interacted that day.
Any modern chemist will tell you that tasting reagents is a very bad idea. This is because the spirit of adventurism has died in modern scientists.
During the tasting, Fahlberg realized that benzoic acid sulfimide had sweetened his hands. Together with the founder of the laboratory, Ira Remsen, he published several papers on this compound in the 1880s. And in 1884, Konstantin patented his discovery as "saccharin" and began industrial production, which made him rich.
The president of Hopkins University, Ira Remsen, by the way, was not mentioned in Fahlberg's patent, although his merits in research on the properties of matter were no less. On this occasion, he is quite acrimonious. spoke outFahlberg is a scoundrel. It makes me sick when I hear my name mentioned next to his."
For a long time, benzoic acid sulfimide was not very popular, but during the First World War, due to a shortage of sugar, it became its substitute. In addition, dieters and diabetics saccharin was especially appreciated because it has no nutritional value and does not raise glucose levels.
Now it is used in the production of sweets, cookies, toothpaste, chewing gum and sweeten their medicines.
4. Viagra
Viagra became the world's first drug for erectile dysfunction, but it was not originally created for this. Pfizer synthesized the chemical sildenafil, hoping to create a cure for heart disease.
Clinical trials have shown that Viagra does not heal the heart. But another curious effect was discovered: men who received the pill experienced powerful erections.
Pfizer immediately realized what was happening, and conducted more tests. This time the drug was tested on 4,000 men with erectile dysfunction. The results were excellent. So a pill was invented, the name of which is now known to everyone - even those who do not need to take it especially.
5. Insulin
In the history of medicine, purely by chance, not only pills were invented to maintain an erection, but also drugs that could save lives. Like penicillin, which found in a rotten pumpkin. Or here's another example...
In 1889, two doctors from the University of Strasbourg, Oskar Minkowski and Joseph von Mehring, tried understand how the pancreas affects digestion. To this end, they took and cut out this very organ from a dog.
After a few days, the researchers noticed flies swarming around the dog's urine. We decided to test it - and found a high sugar content.
The two realized that they had inadvertently made the dog diabetic and that the pancreas regulates blood sugar levels. Already later, between 1920 and 1922, researchers from the University of Toronto, based on the findings of Minkowski and von Mehring, were able to highlight secret pancreas. They named it insulin.
6. Anesthesia
In 1772, the English naturalist and chemist Joseph Priestley synthesized nitrous oxide and called it tricky - dephlogisticated nitrous air. Phlogiston - this is such an imaginary "flammable invisible gas", the presence of which scientists then explained combustion.
Priestley discovered nitrous, but did not attach much importance to it. However, later, in 1794, Thomas Beddoes and James Watt succeeded in construct breathing apparatus with it - and they decided to treat tuberculosis with it.
The device was placed in the basement of Beddoes and began to test therapy with "medical air" on patients. Her assistant, Humphrey Davy, was appointed to look after her.
And Davy noticed that consumptive patients on whom nitrous oxide was tested became somehow too cheerful.
Humphrey realized that the apparatus could be used in a more interesting way. He called the substance he emitted "laughing gas" and from 1799 became arrange parties for British aristocrats, during which he pumped guests with nitrous oxide.
Lords and ladies, having inhaled gas, began to laugh and even rolled on the floor in violent fits of euphoria. And Humphrey at the same time gave those who wished to breathe ether, which has the opposite effect - drowsiness, peace and detachment from worldly worries.
For almost 44 years, the only function of nitrous oxide was to entertain the jaded pleasures of the rich, until December 11, 1844, the dentist Horace Wells guessed use this substance to painlessly vomit patients teeth. This is how anesthesia was invented.
7. Teflon
The material that covers your pans was also invented by accident. One day in 1938, Dupont chemist Roy Plunkett was trying to create a new refrigerant. One of the substances he experimented with was gaseous tetrafluoroethylene.
Roy placed gas cylinder in dry ice and left for a while. And when he returned, he found that there was no gas in the tank, although it was clogged.
Out of curiosity, Plunkett sawed the balloon and found that due to the cold and contact with iron, the gas turned into a substance that settled on the walls of the vessel. It turned out to be heat-resistant, slippery and inert to acids. As a result, Dupont patented this substance in 1941, and in 1945 registered it under the Teflon trademark.
At first, this substance was used in uranium enrichment plants. They were used to coat valves and seals in pipes containing highly reactive uranium hexafluoride.
But teflon found and other application. For example, in 1954, the French engineer Marc Gregoire, for the sake of interest, covered his fishing tackle with it. And his wife Colette suggested that he do the same with her frying pans.
Grégoire coated his wife's frying pan with a mixture of Teflon and aluminum and named it Tefal. This is how the non-stick coating was born, which, as it is known from advertising, "always thinks of you."
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