Categories: Tech

5 Life Changing Inventions That Were Made By Accidents

EDITOR’S PICK

We use things like microwaves, matches and other common Inventions every day, and they naturally make our lives easier.

But, believe it or not, these brilliant inventions that allow us to live our lives without worry were created totally by chance, rather than via trial and error.

In this article on EKO HOT BLOG, we would be looking at 5 Life-changing Inventions that were made accidentally

1. Micro Wave

Percy LeBaron Spencer was working on magnetrons, which are high-powered vacuum tubes that produce short radio waves known as microwaves when he found microwave cooking by mistake.

When the engineer discovered that the candy bar in his pocket had melted, he went about his business as usual. Spencer quickly determined that the magnetrons were the source of the problem. By 1945, he had filed a patent for his microwave-powered aluminium cooking box.

2. Super Glue

In 1942, Harry Coover was looking for ingredients to make clear plastic gun sights for the war effort, but instead discovered a chemical mixture that adhered to anything it came into contact with.

However, his discovery was dismissed because researchers didn’t see a need for such a sticky formula, and it wasn’t until 1951 that Coover and fellow Eastman Kodak researcher Fred Joyner embraced and repurposed the same formula as “Alcohol-Catalyzed Cyanoacrylate Adhesive Compositions/Superglue,” as the patent reads.

3. Matches

In 1826, chemist John Walker discovered what are now matchsticks when he accidentally scraped a stick coated in chemicals across his hearth and found that it caught fire.

Walker’s “Friction Lights,” as he called them, were originally made out of cardboard, but eventually, he switched over to using wooden splints and sandpaper.

4. Chewing gum

Though variations of chewing gum have been around since ancient Greece, the gum that we know today wasn’t discovered until the late 1800s. It was then that an American named Thomas Adams Sr. was the mastermind of the magnificent invention. He stumbled upon the chewy treat—but only after first trying and failing to turn chicle (the substance that gum is made out of) into rubber.

5. Coca-Cola’s syrup

The man who came about the invention of Coca-Cola’s syrup was neither a chef nor even in the culinary sector. Dr John Stith Pemberton, a pharmacist, was the soda’s creator.

He wanted to make cocaine- and caffeine-laced alcoholic drink that people with chemical addictions to drugs (including himself) could use to wean themselves off of morphine and other drugs.

FURTHER READING

Pemberton was compelled to remove the alcohol from his mix when Prohibition began (though the cocaine remained for decades), and the first bottle of Coca-Cola was produced in 1886.

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