Tune in to find out!Get unexpected stories, amazing places, and extraordinary trips and experiences right in your inbox.Atlas Obscura and our trusted partners use technology such as cookies on our website to personalise ads, support social media features, and analyse our traffic. None explained the signal, and the scientists wondered if they had detected a sign from aliens. His This story isn't as well documented as some others, and other accounts for the discovery of quinine's medicinal properties exist, but it's at least an interesting legend of an accidental world-changing finding.Despite the fact that the tube was covered, he saw that a nearby fluorescent screen would glow when the tube was on and the room was dark. Will the journey end in a Nobel Prize or a melted chocolate bar? In 1911, under his supervision, German physicist Hans Geiger and physics undergraduate student Ernest Marsden observed how alpha particles scattered from a gold foil. 10 Accidental Discoveries That Changed the World Andy Simmons Updated: Aug. 09, 2018 From penicillin and anesthesia to saccharin and silly putty, chance played a … 6. The mould actually turned out to be a rare strain of Penicillin was introduced in the 1940's, helping open up the era of antibiotics.Pfizer introduced the chemical Sildenafil, the active drug in Viagra, as a heart medication.Even if they hadn't been able to maintain an erection before, the ability returned while they were on Viagra.Pfizer conducted clinical trials on 4,000 men with erectile dysfunction, and saw the same results.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 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. He did so, writing later that he felt it was a test of his experimental skills, if nothing else. He picked up a roll, and noticed that it seemed sweet - as did everything else he touched.He went back to the lab and started tasting compounds until he found the results of an experiment combining o-sulfobenzoic acid with phosphorus chloride and ammonia (tasting random chemicals is not generally considered a safe lab practice).Fahlberg patented saccharin in 1884 (leaving Remsen's name off the patent, despite the fact that they co-published the first paper on the material) and began mass production.
Teflon - Roy Plunkett This revolutionized the medical field, as many of the mysteries surrounding diseases were suddenly clear as crystal. Viagra. Accidental Discoveries is a series of talks revealing accidents that led to major discoveries in a different field each week, including astronomy, math, biology, and more! They called the self-assembling particles “smart dust”. The image burned on the plate was “fogged” – the crystal had still emitted rays, despite the lack of sunlight. Hailed as one of the top inventions this century, it is used to monitor the purity of water, detect harmful chemicals in the air and locate and destroy tumours in the body.The heating effect of a high-power microwave beam was discovered in 1945 by Percy Spencer, an American engineer working for the company Raytheon. Please click below to consent to the use of this technology while browsing our site. Top Accidental Inventions That Changed The World. These chemicals he studied were going to be used as pharmaceuticals, and many derivatives of them are still used today.While working with this chemical, Hoffmann reported feeling restless and dizzy.He went home to lay down and "sank into a kind of drunkenness which was not unpleasant and which was characterised by extreme activity of the imagination," according to his own notes. Curious, he placed a bowl of popcorn in front of the tube and it began to pop. Penicillin. The most famous of these accidental inventions is, of course, penicillin, and we'll get to that, I promise. Intrigued, Edward Jenner isolated the cowpox bacteria, cultured it and injected it into a small boy named James Phipps, who showed symptoms of the cowpox disease. Spencer then created a high-density electromagnetic field by feeding microwave power from a magnetron into a metal box from which it could not escape. Upon investigation Benedictus realised that somehow, the plastic coating had helped the glass stay together.But the substance had a good side, too. Gather your team and compete in a weekly contest of wits and educated-guessing. Vulcanised rubber is still in use today, notably in car tyres.In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen was working with a cathode ray tube. Chesebrough noticed that the workers used rod wax to soothe cuts and burns on their skin, and he took some home to experiment with.The product of his experimentation was what we know today as petroleum jelly, or Vaseline. 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. In 1878, he had successfully cultured the bacteria responsible for the chicken cholera disease. Link and her supervisor discovered that tiny bits of the chip were still sending signals, operating as tiny sensors. She is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Math & Science at Pratt Institute and has traveled the world as a creative consultant with Museum Hack.