Home » News Stories • Spotlight • US business news » The pacemaker, fireworks and potato chips – these products were all invented by accident
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We often hold inventors of products we wouldn't live without in high regard and praise their achievements and hard work.
But many products throughout history were made entirely by accident.
It makes them more worthy of their place in history because it shows how vital some of these products are to us now, but if it weren't for someone doing a specific thing that day that accidentally invented them, we might not have them.
Creator: Percy Spencer.
Spencer was an engineer working for Raytheon Corporation.
What was supposed to have been made: He was doing research based on radars with a new vacuum tube.
How it was made: Spencer had a chocolate bar in his pocket that was melting while conducting experiments. So, fascinated by this, he put popcorn into the machine, and it began to pop.
This was the first steps of a revolutionary device we can't live without.
Creator: John Hopps.
Hopps was working as an electrical engineer.
What was supposed to have been made: Hopps was researching the effects of hypothermia and seeing if radio frequency could be used to heat and restore body temperature.
How it was made: In the middle of the experiment, he acknowledged that if a heart stopped beating because the body temperature was too low, it could be restored and started again by artificial stimulation.
This led to the pacemaker, which saves thousands of lives every year.
Creator: George Crum.
Crum was a chef at the Carey Moon Lake House in New York.
What was supposed to have been made: Fried potatoes.
How it was made: The potato chip came into being thanks to an unhappy customer.
Crum was on shift one evening when an irate customer sent back his plate of potatoes.
The man sent them back to the kitchen asking for them to be more fried and cut thinner, and thinner, and thinner.
Eventually, Crum lost his cool and sliced them as thinly as he could and fried them until they were solid.
In fact, the fussy customer loved them, and that was how potato chips were born.
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Creator: An unknown chef in China
What was supposed to have been made: Allegedly, the chef was messing around and experimenting in the kitchen.
How it was made: The cook accidentally mixed charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter, everyday kitchen items at the time. This mixture was put in a bamboo tube, and it exploded.
Creator: Albert Hofmann.
Hofmann worked as a chemist.
What was supposed to have been made: He was researching lysergic acid products at a lab in Switzerland.
How it was made: The chemist accidentally swallowed a small dose of LSD while trying to research its properties and was inadvertently the first person in history to have an acid trip.
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