Most inventors strive for weeks, months, or years to perfect their products. (Thomas Edison tried thousands of different light bulb filaments before arriving at the ideal mixture of tungsten.)
But sometimes, brilliance strikes by accident.
Here's a salute to the scientists, chefs, and everyday folk who stumbled upon greatness—and, more important, shared their mistakes with the world.
Let's roll through the 15 best accidental inventions.
15. The Potato Chip
The first potato chips were meant as an insult.
Hotel chef George Crum enjoyed a wonderful knack for cooking. From his kitchen at Moon's Lake House near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Mr. Crum could "take anything edible and transform it into a dish fit for a king." That skill came in handy—the upscale Lake House attracted customers who were used to being treated like kings.
In 1853, a cranky guest complained about Crum's fried potatoes. They were too thick, he said. Too soggy and bland. The patron demanded a new batch.
Crum did not take this well. He decided to play a trick on the diner. The chef sliced a potato paper-thin, fried it until a fork could shatter the thing, and then purposefully over-salted his new creation. The persnickety guest will hate this, he thought. But the plan backfired. The guy loved it! He ordered a second serving.
Word of this new snack spread quickly. "Saratoga Chips" became a hit across New England, and Crum went on to open his own restaurant. Today, that accidental invention has ballooned into a massive snack industry.
14. X-Rays
In the late 1800s, the world became a seemingly magical place. Scientists discovered radiation, radio waves, and other invisible forces of nature. For a while there, many serious researchers joined seances and believed in ghosts. Science had discovered so many mysterious phenomena – things that the eye could not see but were definitely there – that many people wondered, what else might be out there?
German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered one of these invisible powers by accident.
Röntgen experimented with cathode-ray tubes, basically glass tubes with the air sucked out and a special gas pumped in. They work kinda like modern-day fluorescent light bulbs. When Röntgen ran electricity through the gas, the tube would glow. But something strange happened after he surrounded the tube with black cardboard. When he turned on the machine, a chemical a few feet away started to glow. The cardboard should have prevented any light from escaping, so what caused this distant glow?
Little did he know that the cathode-ray tube had been sending out more than just light. It shot out invisible rays that could pass right through paper, wood, and even skin. The lab chemical that lit up – the one that tipped off Röntgen – reacted to these rays. He called the phenomenon X-rays. The X stood for "unknown."
Röntgen went on to capture the first X-ray images, including a shot of his wife's hand (pictured, above). Upon seeing this skeletal image, she exclaimed, "I have seen my own death!"
13. Saccharin
Saccharin came as a sweet surprise—and a scary one.
Before Sweet’N Low and diet sodas, there was a plucky researcher studying something completely different: coal tar.
In the 1870s, Russian chemist Constantin Fahlberg worked in the lab of Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University. Remsen's team experimented with coal-tar derivates, seeing how they react to phosphorus, chloride, ammonia, and other chemicals. (Not exactly the most appetizing profession.)
One night, Fahlberg returned home and started to chow down on dinner rolls. Something was off. The rolls tasted curiously sweet. The recipe hadn't changed, so what was going on here? He soon realized that it wasn't the rolls. It was him. His hands were covered with a mystery chemical that made everything sweet.
"Fahlberg had literally brought his work home with him, having spilled an experimental compound over his hands earlier that day,"writes the Chemical Heritage Foundation in its history of saccharin. "He ran back to Remsen’s laboratory, where he tasted everything on his worktable—all the vials, beakers, and dishes he used for his experiments. Finally he found the source: an overboiled beaker."
Fahlberg had actually created saccharin before, but since he never bothered to taste-test his concoctions, the chemist had no idea. In fact, a modern chemist probably would have never discovered saccharin. Nowadays, people thoroughly wash their hands before leaving the lab. If Fahlberg had followed the normal rules of cleanliness, the world would be without this zero-calorie artificial sweetener.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider