| Here’s the History of Some of the World’s Great Inventions Created by Mistakes Wild Mistake 1. THE DONUT. Hanson Gregory, born in Maine in 1832, was a sea captain. The long used method of frying a sweet cake had been used in various ways throughout the world. On a fateful night, while steering his ship in a storm, he was munching on a fried cake. He, like most people, hated the soggy center of the fried cake. Needing both hands to steer the ship, he stuck the cake on one of the spokes of the wheel. The soggy center was gone and the new way of frying cake was born. After the storm of the night, he ordered the cook to fry the cakes with a hole in the middle. Today, about a billion dollars are spend on donuts. Do you like to dunk your donut in your coffee? Wild Mistake 2. ASPIRIN. All the way back before the birth of Christ, people were using the leaves of willow trees to relieve pain. Hippocrates said a tea made of willow leaves was a good pain reliever. However, the active ingredient in the reliever, salicylic acid, was painful to the stomach and mouth. In 1853, French chemist, Charles Gerhardt, mixed another ingredient with the acid and had good results, reducing stomach and mouth pain for the few who tried his mixture. However, the process for making it was time consuming and hard so he put his work aside. What next for the mistakes? In 1893, a German chemist, Felix Hoffman, was searching for a pain reliever for his father’s arthritis. He studied the work of Gerhardt. He rediscovered acetylsalicylic acid – aspirin – and the world of pain relief was changed forever. Today, millions and millions of pounds of aspirin are produced worldwide. Aspirin can even stem a heart attack. Have you ever thought of a possible invention? Tried it out? Wild Mistake 3.TIRES – the big, brilliant mistake. To begin with, rubber had been around for centuries. When Columbus landed, he saw children bouncing rubber balls made for tree sap. Central and South American folks had long made crude shoes and rain repellent cloths. However, when the weather turned hot, the rubber turned into a globby mess. In cold weather, in turned brittle. In 1770, Joseph Priestly was fiddling around with some pieces of rubber in his home in England. He discovered, the gum material would “rub” out his pencil writings. He called the material rubber. But the big discovery came in 1839, in Woburn, Massachusetts. Charles Goodyear was experimenting with rubber and adding other substances to see if it could be more usable and resistant to weather issues. One chemical he added to the sappy stuff was Sulphur. ACCIDENTALLY – he dropped the mixture on a hot stove. When he scraped up the mess, he discovered the material was flexible. He set the glob out in the frigid New England winter weather. The “vulcanized” rubber did not turn brittle. The new rubber became raincoats for soldiers in the Civil War and, soon, many other uses were discovered, most importantly tires for moving vehicles like cars. Just so you know, the world’s largest tires made so far are 12 feet in diameter and weigh 12,500 pounds. So, in this new year, I challenge you to invent – to write – to compose songs – to come out of your TV watching comfort zone – and make a positive difference in the world. |
| Wild mistake 4 Piggy Banks This odd way of saving money came about from a different use of pig. Since pigs were animals that buried things, and because, in the Middle Ages, folks made their dishes out of hardened clay called – “PYGG,” the idea of saving a few coins in the Pygg clay jar became the housewife’s “piggy bank.” Later, manufacturers, back when saving coins was a standard behavior, designed clay and plastic banks in the design of pigs. So there you go. Don’t hog all this information. Spread it around. |
God bless lucky accidents or as I prefer to call them serendipity. I heard that the discovery of different blood types was a lucky accident. A man in Italy (I think) accidentally mixed blood samples and discovered some of them would clump and some didn’t. He eventually figured out the different blood types and compatibility which answered the question of why some blood transfusions worked and some didn’t. But his article was published and forgotten until years later (2nd lucky accident or serendipity) a doctor was catching up on reading medical journals and realized what this meant.
Excellent information. Way to go, Sarah, and thanks so much for sharing. Email me your address and I’ll send you a signed copy of Scrooge and Cratchit, Detectives.
Curt