These things were invented completely by accident (7 photos)

We are now provided with a wide variety of household appliances and gadgets that make our lives much easier.





There are obvious benefits from the development of technology and progress. Scientists and engineers have been working hard to help humanity live in comfort. The funny thing is that some of these things were invented completely by accident.

Teflon



In 1938, Roy Plunkett, a chemist for Dupont, was working to create a refrigerant. And one of the substances on which he experimented was tetrafluoroethylene gas.

Plunkett stuck the gas cylinder into the dry ice and left. And when he returned, he saw that there was no gas in the container, despite the fact that the cylinder was tightly sealed.

A curious chemist sawed the container and saw that due to contact with iron and cold, the gas became a substance deposited on the walls of the container. This substance was slippery, heat-resistant and inert to acids.

The Dupont company patented an accidental invention in 1941, and in 1945 registered the Teflon trademark. It was initially used in uranium enrichment plants. But then they gradually found another use for it, when in 1945 engineer Marc Gregoire, just for fun, coated his fishing gear with Teflon, and his wife suggested coating her frying pans with it.

Gregoire coated the utensils with a mixture of aluminum and Teflon and called it Tefal. Ever since then, she has been “thinking about you.”

Microwave





A self-taught engineer, Percy Spencer began working for Raytheon Technologies Corporation in 1945, where he was to develop active radars for the United States.

One fine day, he noticed that a chocolate bar lying in his pocket had melted from the microwaves of his experimental apparatus. Spencer became interested in this process and began to conduct experiments: he placed an egg next to the magnetron tube - it exploded, put popcorn in and it heated up until it crunched.

Percy and his assistant quickly built a metal box, attached a magnetron inside it, and the structure became the first microwave in the world.

Raytheon Technologies noted the originality of thought of its employee and the directors of the company realized that much more could be earned in the consumer sector than in the military field.

The first microwave ovens were approximately the size of a gas oven and were liquid-cooled. They weren't very popular until they figured out how to reset the cooling with air. And already in 1975, microwave ovens in the United States were selling more than gas stoves.

Viagra



This is the world's first drug for erectile dysfunction. But at first it was for completely different purposes.

Pfizer synthesized the chemical sildenafil to develop a cure for heart disease.

But during clinical trials it turned out that Viagra did not help the heart, but the men who took it during the trials experienced powerful erections.

The company immediately realized what was going on and began testing 4,000 men with erectile dysfunction. The results turned out to be so impressive that today Viagra has become known to absolutely everyone.

Anesthesia



Naturalist and chemist Joseph Priestley was able to synthesize nitrous oxide in 1772. He elegantly called it dephlogisticated nitrogenous air.

But his discovery went unnoticed. Until, in 1794, James Watt and Thomas Beddoes invented a device so that one could breathe this same nitrous oxide. They thought that with the help of this device it would be possible to treat tuberculosis.

They began to conduct tests on patients - assistant Humphry Davy supervised the therapy with “medical air”. He noted that the consumptives became painfully cheerful during the tests, while some of them did not even have the strength to smile.

Humphrey quickly realized that the device could be used in more interesting ways. The assistant dubbed the substance “laughing gas” and, starting in 1799, launched a series of parties for wealthy Britons, where he pumped them full of nitrous oxide.

The prim Englishmen fell into frantic joy, to the point of euphoric wallowing on the floor. And in order to calm down the excess fun, Humphrey gave his charges to breathe ether, which, on the contrary, calmed and caused detachment.

And this went on for 44 years, until on December 11, 1844, dentist Horace Wells came up with the idea of ​​​​using nitrous oxide to anesthetize patients during tooth extraction.

One of the best inventions of mankind.

Insulin



Leonard Thompson. First patient to receive a dose of insulin

One of the greatest inventions of mankind. On par with penicillin. It is officially believed that insulin was discovered on July 27, 1921.

But we cannot fail to note the contribution of the University of Strasbourg doctors Joseph von Mehring and Oscar Minkowski. They are in 1889, trying to figure out how the pancreas affects digestion. They removed this organ from the dog.

They noticed, after a certain time, that flies began to swarm over the traces of dog urine. Testing showed high sugar content.

The doctors realized that their experiment had accidentally caused the dog to become diabetic and that it was the pancreas that regulates blood sugar levels.

But the young scientist Frederick Banting, together with his assistant, in the period from 1920 to 1922, based on the findings of von Mehring and Minkowski, successfully isolated the secretion of the pancreas and called it insulin.

For more than a century, people suffering from diabetes have been able to lead full lives, despite the fact that the disease is still incurable. Previously, their life expectancy rarely exceeded a year or two.

Velcro fastener



Georges de Mestral with his dog

When engineer Georges de Mestral returned from a hike with his dog in 1941, he saw that all its fur was covered with burrs.

All dog owners have probably encountered this problem when their beloved pet crawls out of the bushes covered in prickly “orders.” Usually the owners sigh and begin to methodically select burdocks from the wool. But de Mestral was an engineer and he became interested in examining the burdock under a microscope. Then he noticed that all his pants were also strewn with burrs and thought that it would be nice to create a material that would also cling tightly to everything.

For nine years, Georges conducted experiments and found that nylon threads in synthetic fabric, if cut, become as hooked as those of burdock.

It took a year to create a loom to automatically create such mini-hooks, and in 1951 de Mestral finally managed to patent his know-how.

At first the fabric looked completely unattractive and was not a success. But everything changed at the moment when, in the early 1960s, Georges was invited to NASA to participate in the creation of spacesuits. It was there that Velcro became not only functional, but also beautiful.

Companies producing suits for sailors, skiers and underwater divers began to buy the fabric. Georges textile centers opened in Sweden, USA, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy.

Today it’s even strange to imagine a world without Velcro, which are everywhere - from clothing to medical devices.

This is how the dog successfully climbed into the burdock bush.