Accidental Discoveries
Some scientific discoveries come about after painstaking, goal-oriented lab work finally yields the result that a researcher is trying to find. But many of the most incredible discoveries in world came about when someone found something they weren't looking for. In some cases, these are the result of a true accident. Perhaps more often, world-changing discoveries are the result of a creative mind realising that a material or invention could be repurposed into something incredible.
A In 1946 Percy Spencer, an engineer for the Raytheon Corporation, was working on a radar-related project. While testing a new vacuum tube, he discovered that a chocolate bar he had in his pocket melted more quickly than he would have expected. He became intrigued and started experimenting by aiming the tube at other items, such as eggs and popcorn kernels. Spencer concluded that the heat the objects experienced was from the microwave energy. Soon after, on October 8, 1945, Raytheon filed a patent for the first microwave. The first microwave weighed 340 kg and stood 168 cm tall. The first countertop microwave was introduced in 1965 and cost US$500.
B Quinine is an anti-malarial compound that originally comes from tree bark. Now we usually find it in tonic water, though it is still used in drugs that treat malaria as well. Jesuit missionaries in South America used quinine to treat malaria as early as 1600, but legend has it that they heard that it could be used to treat the illness from the native Andean population - and that the original discoverer found these properties with a stroke of luck. The original tale involved a feverish Andean man lost in the jungle and suffering from malaria. Parched, he drank from a pool of water at the base of a quina-quina tree. The water's bitter taste made him fear that he had drunk something that would make him sicker, but the opposite happened. His fever abated, and he was able to find his way home and share the story of the curative tree.
C In 1903 Edouard Benedictus, a French scientist, dropped a glass flask that had been filled with a solution of cellulose nitrate, a sort of liquid plastic. It broke, and the liquid evaporated. But it did not shatter. The pieces of glass were broken, but they stayed in place and maintained the shape of the container. Upon investigation Benedictus realised that somehow, the plastic coating had helped the glass stay together. This was the first type of safety glass developed - a product which is now frequently used in car windshields, safety goggles, and much more.
D The discovery that later allowed researchers to find insulin was an accident. In 1889, two doctors at the University of Strasbourg, Oscar Minkowski and Josef von Mering, were trying to understand how the pancreas affected digestion, so they removed the organ from a healthy dog. A few days later, they noticed that flies were swarming around the dog's urine - something abnormal, and unexpected. They tested the urine, and found sugar in it. They realised that by removing the pancreas, they had given the dog diabetes. Those two never figured out what the pancreas produced that regulated blood sugar. But during a series of experiments that occurred between 1920 and 1922, researchers at the University of Toronto were able to isolate a pancreatic secretion that they called insulin. Their team was awarded the Nobel prize, and within a year, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was making and selling insulin.
E When Harry Coover, Jr. first discovered the substance that would become Super Glue, he was actually experimenting with clear plastic gun sights for use in World War II. He had been experimenting with a class of chemicals called acrylates, but found that the formula he came up with was too sticky and abandoned the substance. Years later, in 1951, Coover was again looking at acrylates, this time for use in a heat-resistant coating for jet cockpits. One day, his colleague Fred Joyner spread one of the acrylate compounds between two lenses to examine it with a refractometer. To his dismay, he found that the two lenses stuck together and could not be separated, a waste of expensive lab equipment - or so he thought. This time around, Coover saw the potential in the sticky substance, and several years later it finally went on the market as an adhesive we know today as Super Glue.