The Power of Accidental Discoveries 174
schmiddy writes "An article from Wired mentions the surprising number of discoveries that have been made entirely by accident. In an older article, The Discovery Channel's site points out a different subset of inventions that happened by accident. A much older article from PBS goes into more depth on the subject of accidental discoveries, and gives a great quote from physicist Joseph Henry: 'The seeds of great discoveries are constantly floating around us, but they only take root in minds well prepared to receive them.'"
Inkjet printers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Number 10: Potato Chips (Score:5, Interesting)
The accidental discovery of the potato chip was important only in that ultimately, when people searched for a way to improve the thin and lackluster potato chip of the masses, the miracle of Pringles was born. I don't know how people could just eat those greasy things that come in a bag for several decades.
One item of trivia that might amuse fans of science fiction is that the machine responsible for Pringles was invented by Gene Wolfe, author of the masterpiece tetralogy The Book of the New Sun [amazon.com] and formerly a professional engineer.
Re:Not so surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
for instance.. when the periodic table was first created, it was surmised there were many elements which were to be discovered.. loe and behold they were eventually, but a lot of the later ones had to be lab created. Had the periodic table not been produced we might not have been interested in doing so.
What I don't get is why half the polymers we use dont end up on that list linked in but viagra does, oh wait yes i do ; ).. but i mean several polymers (the names of which i can't recall off the top of my head) were discovered as a biproduct of petrol purification experiments.
Asimov (Score:2, Interesting)
janting (Score:2, Interesting)
My description would pale in comparison to the original, so I won't try. Suffice to say, read this book, be amazed, then look when it was written and be doubly amazed.
Fundemental discoveries are made by accident. (Score:4, Interesting)
Flotation - For the separation of mixtures (Score:4, Interesting)
[i]is a method for the separation of mixtures. Flotation is a separation technique used widely in the minerals industry, for paper, de-inking, and water treatment amongst others. It can also be used in the food and coal industries. The technique relies upon differences in the surface properties of different particles to separate them. The particles that are to be floated are rendered hydrophobic by the addition of the appropriate chemicals. Air is then bubbled through the mixture and the desired particles become attached to the small air bubbles and move to the surface where they accumulate as a froth and are collected, or if the non-desired particles float to the surface they are collected and discarded. The flotation process was developed on a commercial scale early in the 20th century at Broken Hill in Australia and is widely used for processing of sulphide minerals (copper, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt etc...).[/i]
The anecdotal story I heard was the chief metalurgists wife was washing his work clothes and commented on the shiny qualities of the bubbles.
AI breakthrough from tweaking parameters (Score:1, Interesting)
A breakthrough in artificial intelligence [artilectworld.com] occurred on 7 June 2006 as a result of tweaking some parameters in open-source AI software.
How can I "prepare my mind" (Joseph Henry quote)? (Score:4, Interesting)
In an alternate train of thought, it's too bad Charles Robert Richet, the French physiologist mentioned in the article [pbs.org], couldn't have experimented on politicians instead of dogs.... Maybe a precident could have been set that
Re:Number 10: Potato Chips and Pringles (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pringles [wikipedia.org]
But I also have a personal recollection. When in University, I was an engineering student at a major US "ivy league" school. Naturally we had people from industry who would visit on occasion and discuss the ways in which engineering were used in businesses (so as to appear attractive to as as potential career choices for employment). One such presentation was in 1974 or 1975 on Pringles from a guy from Procter & Gamble (don't think it was the inventor, but someone related to the product).
What was interesting was his perspective on the "why" of Pringles. The key points as I remember them are:
- Pringles could be made from "dehydrated cooked potatoes" as the Wiki article mentions. Given that dehydrated potatoes were a _big thing_ in the US in the '60s, there would be an advantage to P&G to do this. (This was the case at least where I lived - part of the whole "prepared foods" marketing effort to get us Boomer children to eat things developed for feeding troops in WWII in many cases / in other words, surplus production capacity - but this my opinion, not what was discussed).
- Pringles needed a differentiator, given this somewhat artifical origin; I expect P&G would understand that Frito-Lays would be able to attack their new product as "unnatural" in some way otherwise (the 70's were a time of some backlash against big business food production, due to communes, big-business backlash, and the early "whole foods" movement - aqain my opinion). The answer was the Pringles can, which would permit production of a uniform size chip and would protect them from breakage, while being much more compact to ship, store, and position on shelves (all quite valuable to both P&G and their customers).
My point here was that Procter & Gamble needed to be able to come up with some "new" angle on the potato chip to gain traction in a competitive marketplace for a new product offering. By combining manufacturing (using pre-processed dehydrated potatoes, so no "green edges", no losses of raw materials due to spoilage, and the ability to buy source material from multiple suppliers as well as share production with manufacturing for dehydrated mashed potatoes / a larger product line at that time) with packaging (uniform chip size in a hardened container, at least as compared with chip bags from Lays and Wise, the main competitors in my area) P&G could offer a chip that maintained its shape and volume in the packaging, while being more resistent to attack by vermin as well as more compact to ship (I still wonder what the cost advantage is to ship an equivalent weight in Pringles compared with regular chips) as well as display. Notice how much less space Pringles take up in a grocery store, compared with Lays (even if there are now many more choices than the "original" flavor and can size)?
This must have been a very successful strategy for P&G, given both the longevity and the continued market presence of Pringles. I bought a can on the airline flight I took home just this past Thursday - the short cans are great for tight spaces where long shelf-life would be valued, such as in airplane food carts or hotel minibars (often see only Pringles on both).
All in all, it was a good lesson to a young engineering student - of both the good and bad aspects of business uses of science and engineering. Since many of the accidential "discoveries" or "products" come from similar confluences of science/engineering/manufacturing/marketing (can you say "Viagra"?), I thought this would be a useful addition to this thread.
Y.A.A.C.
Actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
Edison was a shrewd businessman and marketer, as well. He still has a lot of people fooled, including you, apparently.
Film? I assume by this you mean "motion pictures", but Edison was not the "inventor" of such technology, he merely managed to package it up into a nice assembly. Many, many people contributed toward the progress of motion picture technology - Edison merely stood on all of these men's shoulders and set up an "easy to use" system.
Audio? If you mean the phonograph, then I will give you this one - such a device was fairly unique to come out of Menlo Park, though I bet if you researched it carefully, you will still find precedents in the technology. Even so, I would be more inclined to give this to him than other things he "invented". One thing Edison completely missed was the invention of what would later become known as the "triode" - the vacuum tube, to be precise. Edison noticed the electrons being "given off" by the heated filament of one of his light bulbs, but chalked it up as a curiosity of no importance. It would be years later that DeForrest would recognize the usefulness of this, which was termed "the Edison Effect", to develop the vacuum tube, around which audio amplifiers, useful radio, electronic computers, radar, and a whole host of other devices could be developed.
Finally, electricity and light bulbs? You have to be kidding me. Yes, Edison perfected the incandescent electric bulb, but many other inventors were working on similar devices - Edison merely had the forethought to try every possible material he could think of in a "brute force" attempt to build a better electric lamp. His lamp was the "best of breed", but it wasn't unique. This isn't unexpected, though, as many inventions throughout history have been "simultaneously" discovered and patent disputes abounded. It seems like for certain inventions at certain points in time, history shows that multiple people hit upon success, and whoever gets to the patent office first, wins.
However, with electricity, you are really far off the mark. Today's modern electricity generation and distribution system (not to mention tons of other modern devices like flourescent bulbs, microwave ovens, plasma TVs, radio control and the like) would not be possible were it not for the genius of one man: Nikola Tesla. There has been so much written about this man by others more capable than I that I won't go into details, save that Edison (of whom Tesla was a former employee, and he offerred Edison a more advanced form of electricity generation, which Edison turned down, causing Nikola to leave and sell the system to George Westinghouse, who set up the first AC generating station at Niagara Falls) did all he could to wipe Tesla's name from the spotlight of electrical history. It almost worked - some would even say, to the layman, it did work.
What invention can we really credit Edison for, though? Yep - the electric chair. Edison came up with the system in an effort to discredit Tesla, by building a device that could kill a person using AC (which, at the lower frequencies for electrical distribution tends to make the muscles of the body unresponsive). Ultimately, it didn't work out for Edison, because the efficiencies of long distance transport of power using AC won out. Tesla wanted to go one step further - wireless power transmission, of which we still don't completely understand where he was going. Some have speculated that it was based on his high frequency Tesla coil apparatus, but from what I have read and understood, Tesla was intimately familiar with resonant frequency systems, and love oscillators (both electronic and mechanical). From his published patents, and various other reading I have done, it seems most likely he was going to use his system to "pump" the earth itself to resonant frequency, to allow others anywhere in the w
Teflon (Score:2, Interesting)
One day in his chemistry lab, Dr. Roy J. Plunkett went to open a tank of gaseous tetrafluoroethylene, but no gas came out. Many lab workers, even scientists, would simply replace the tank with a full one. But not Plunkett! He weighed the tank and mysteriously, it still weighed the same as when it was full of gas! Evidently the gas had *not* leaked out.
He investigated by actually sawing the gas tank open. Inside he found a white, waxy powder! The original gas molecules had bonded together to form this incredible solid, eventually named Teflon.
If he hadn't thought "Hmm, that's odd" and pursued it, he wouldn't have discovered Teflon.
See http://users.wfu.edu/starbt5/Serendipity%20Projec