ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERIES

PENICILLIN

When Scottish biologist Alexander Fleming came back from vacation

he noticed that his bacteria were all being killed off by a strange fungus.

Modern medicine has never been the same.

THE MICROWAVE

After Percy Spencer, an engineer working for Raytheon, walked in front

of a Magnetron he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket melted.

Several years later he successfully put together the first

microwave oven.

VELCRO

While on a hiking trip in 1941 Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral

found burrs clinging to his pants and realized that the burr’s hooks

would cling to anything loop shaped.

All he had to do was recreate the loops.

TEFLON

Roy Plunkett, a scientist at DuPont, was looking for ways to make

refrigerators more home friendly by replacing their somewhat dangerous

refrigerants. One of the samples he was working with ended up leaving a

strange, slippery resin that was resistant to heat and chemicals.

VULCANIZED RUBBER

Although in the 1830s the inability of rubber to withstand extreme

temperatures led many to write it off, Charles Goodyear saw things

differently. After years of experimenting he accidentally dropped one

of his concoctions on the stove and it didn’t burn.

Rubber was now weatherproof.

COCA-COLA

John Pemberton was not a businessman. He just wanted to cure

headaches. His recipes consisted of two things – coca leaves and

cola nuts. When his lab assistant accidentally mixed the two

with carbonated water Coke was born.

RADIOACTIVITY

In 1896 French scientist Henri Becquerel was working on an

experiment where uranium enriched crystal was burning an image

onto a photographic plate using sunlight…or so he thought. When dark

clouds rolled in one day he put the equipment in a drawer to continue

another day. When he came back a few days later he found that the

crystal had somehow still managed to emit rays that “fogged the plate”.

SMART DUST

When chemistry graduate students working on a silicon chip

accidentally shattered it they discovered that the tiny bits of the chip

were still sending signals. They coined the bits “smart dust” and today

they play a role in technologies used to attack and destroy tumours.

CORN FLAKES

Keith Kellogg was assisting his brother who worked as a doctor at

Battle Creek Sanitarium with patients and their diets when he

accidentally left the bread dough sitting out one day. He decided to

bake it anyway and the flaky snack that emerged was a hit

among the patients.