Products Discovered By Accident

Saturday, Aug 15, 2020, 12:41 pm

By:Tony Williams

1.Play-doh

OK so this one is very strange because believe or not this product was originally intended to be used in the wallpaper industry. In actual fact they thought it could be used to clean wallpaper, but it failed and worked its way into being a toy thanks to the creator giving it to a school for an experiment.

2.Choc chip cookies

You are probably wondering how choc chip cookies can possibly be the result of an accident, but that is exactly what happened. They were the result of a bad cooking attempt when a woman was trying to make her very own chocolate dessert. She messed up the ingredients and the chocolate refused to do as it was told to do resulting in this lovely snack.

3.Penicillin

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin completely by chance. He had been working on another experiment, but had left a dirty experiment dish lying around. When he came back to it a few days later he noticed an interesting development with the fungus and penicillin was eventually born.

4.Warfarin

This one is potentially a bit scary, but this drug was first created as a rat poison. Perhaps the most worrying aspect is how did doctors work out that if it was given to humans in low doses it would thin their blood? How did they know the levels that were safe? In actual fact it is perhaps best not to think about it as it would just stress you out even more.

5.Silly Putty

This was discovered in the middle of World War 2 and it was purely due to them looking for an alternative synthetic rubber supply. The experiment for the rubber went wrong, but a toy shop owner who was friends with the chemist saw potential and the toy was born.

6.Artificial sweetener

The discovery of saccharin and it occurred thanks to a worker in the 19th century who forgot to wash his hands after using coal tar and noticed his food tasted sweet. Aspartame was also discovered by accident after a failed attempt at medication to help with ulcers.

7.Microwave ovens

This device is the savior of bad cooks around the world. It was invented after an engineer who was trying out another device noticed his bar of candy had melted. He then got to work and eventually the microwave appeared, so if it was not for some candy we would never have it in our kitchen.

8.Corn Flakes

How boring would breakfast be if there were no Corn Flakes? They came around due to Mr Kellogg leaving boiled wheat alone and forgetting about it followed by it going stale. They then noticed it broke into pieces resulting in them toasting it to try to salvage something leading to what we know as Corn Flakes.

9.Viagra

Viagra was never created to help erectile problems, but instead it was designed to be a cardiovascular drug. However, during tests they noticed that something else was happening as a side effect, so they then switched their attention there instead.

10.Goodyear

The concept of the tire is not the thing that is up for debate here, but rather the vulcanized rubber part. Charles Goodyear was quite open about the fact that he really did just stumble across how it was made, but then it resulted in him becoming a very wealthy man indeed thanks to what is now a massive business.

11.Plastic

We really did just stumble across this amazing material and we did this because we were trying to replicate the shellac from beetle shells. We made a mess of it, but in its place we managed to create something even better because what would the world be like without plastic?

12.Coca Cola

We all know that Coca Cola is the most popular soft drink in the world. However, it started off as a medicinal cure, but after people realized it did not exactly help in that way it still took off as a soft drink leading to the huge brand that it is today.

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