Accidental Inventions

I did not know there were so many "accidental" inventions.  In this post we examine three of them and the association of one of the "inventors" with a famous futurist.

Accidental Inventions

One fascinating aspect of futurism is the “serendipity” involved in developing futuristic ideas. The same applies equally well to inventions. Most inventions are the product of time, multiple failed attempts, then finally, success. Thomas Edison offered this as an explanation, “I have not failed 5,000 times. Rather, I have successfully discovered 5,000 ways that do not work.”  (VCY America, 2022)

While great effort and seemingly unending experimentation is the usual model for creating inventions, many inventions, some mundane, some very momentous, “just happen.” Some are born out of frustration, and others are created because someone combined two substances that technically were not meant to be combined according to current knowledge. Finally, some inventions happened because someone knew the significance of what was happening. This paper examines three of the hundreds of these inventions that “just happened.”

As already mentioned, some inventions are the result of frustration. Frustration seems to be at the root of the invention of the humble potato chip. While there are several stories surrounding the invention of the potato chip, almost everyone agrees that it was first seen at “Moon’s Lake House” in Saratoga Springs, New York, in the mid-1800s. Additionally, most of the legends that describe the invention of the potato chip seem to involve a frustrated cook who had received numerous complaints from a diner that his serving of french fries was too thick and not crisp enough. So, to one-up the complaining diner, the cook sliced a potato into very thin slices and deep fried them, making the chips extremely hard. To the cook’s amazement, the diner loved the product. So the potato chip became a restaurant staple at Moon’s Landing, sold as “Saratoga Chips,” and is now one of the most common American snack foods (Daugherty, 2021).

Numerous inventions have come about by combining various chemicals or products that were not intended to be combined. This circumstance applies to the toy Silly Putty. James Wright, an engineer with the War Production Board in 1943 during World War II, was working on a project to develop a substitute for rubber, a scarce commodity during the war. He was working with silicon, a plentiful commodity, to develop a formulation that would emulate rubber that would be much cheaper than synthetic rubber. In one of his experiments, he mixed silicone oil with boric acid and found that the product behaved very much like rubber. It bounced almost 25 percent higher than a rubber ball, and most importantly, it resisted rot. The product was soft and malleable and stretched to many times its original length without tearing. He also noted another unique quality: its ability to copy images from printed material (Bellis, 2020).

Understandably, “Nutty Putty,” as Wright called his product, did not impress the War Department. However, the millions of kids who found this new toy, now called “Silly Putty,” inside plastic Easter eggs in their Easter egg baskets in the early 1950s were very impressed (2020).

Accidental inventions also happen because an engineer, a technician, a student, or a university professor experiences something and realizes the event’s significance. The very momentous microwave oven was invented this way. A Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer was testing a magnetron to improve the military’s radar capabilities in 1946 and, in the process, invented the microwave more than 70 years ago. While testing the magnetron, he reached into his lab coat and realized that a peanut cluster bar in his lab coat had melted. Understandably he was curious as to what had just happened. So, Spencer tested the magnetron on another food product. For this experiment, he placed an egg beneath the tube. It exploded seconds later.

He opted to ponder the significance of what he had just done and review the evidence the next day. This time Mr. Spencer brought in popcorn kernels, popped them with his new “toy,” and shared instant popcorn with his entire office. Thus the microwave oven was unleashed on the American kitchen (Blitz, 2021).

How did Spencer get into the position of working with magnetrons and discovering the microwave oven? After World War I, Vannevar Bush, the co-founder of the newly-established American Appliance Company, hired Mr. Spencer initially as a radio technician. Mr. Bush, another futurist, is best known for setting up the Manhattan Project and predicting many innovations that led to the computer revolution and the internet (2021). It would appear that futurists attract or find other futurists and allow them to discover the future.

The importance of these discoveries, potato chips, Silly Putty, the microwave oven, and hundreds of others like them, is not the discoveries themselves but the fact that our society offers individuals an opportunity to explore new visions. Each of the individuals in these vignettes saw something that had potential, and just as professional inventors, such as Thomas Edison, used their powers of observation and moved forward to develop something new and exciting.

-- gary

The Internet of Things and the Future

A topic of great interest in cybersecurity is the evolution of the so-called “Internet of Things (IoT).” The IoT has broad implications across the entire spectrum of the cybersecurity domain due to the potential dispersion and inability to manage these devices securely.

The name for this wave in the evolution of the information technology world first appeared in 1999 when Keven Ashton (Elder, 2019) developed the term to describe the fourth wave of information technology development – the Internet of Things.

The concept behind this paradigm shift is to connect anything to the Internet that can exchange information with users and other communication devices. The guiding principle to this paradigm shift is that if a system or component can be, it will be connected. This principle is a significant shift in thinking about connectivity. Previously, the “honor” of being connected belonged only to those systems or components designed to connect and communicate. In the IoT, paradigm connectivity is built into everything from microwave ovens to industrial process controllers. In recent years this shift in thinking seems to be cresting due to the plunging cost and size of processors and chips along with the massive expansion of the internet address space with the widespread application of IPv6 (Asseo et al., 2016)

As seen in Figure 1, the systems that make up the Internet are joined by appliances, cars, alarm systems, and many other devices that provide data collection and transfer, usually without direct human intervention or involvement. We are moving from the early stages of the IoT with multiple smart connections to a new, invisible integration in which the connection is there, but the user community is unaware of its existence, similar to the electrical grid or other utility systems (2016).

Figure 1

The "Internet of Things" Expands

(Graphic courtesy of "Free Vector Graphics" at pixabay.com)



Let’s examine one of the five panelists that Educause assembled to discuss this shift and the effects that it will have on higher education. Itai Asseo, a strategic innovation executive with Salesforce, Inc., offers several predictions and caveats to the widespread usage of the IoT on college campuses.

He wrote that widespread usage of the IoT will introduce a new level of awareness on the part of students to planned activities and assignments (2016). He notes that colleges and universities are already testing innovative IoT approaches, such as something as complex as deploying fitness devices to gauge student health statistics or indicators or as simple as recording temperatures of lab equipment and providing notifications when specific criteria are met (2016).

Not all of these innovations will come about through introducing new devices or things but through closer integration of the existing mobile devices on campus. Asseo offers an example that the student experience will be improved through the “tighter” integration of the student’s work, their schedules, and time utilization with messages personally tailored to the needs of individual students (2016).

The one major caveat or danger that Aseo offers is that introducing these systems should aim for the significant “pain” points for students and staff and not just be window dressing to resolve “non-problems.” Without the required human considerations at the forefront of these innovations, the result will be more of the same bureaucratic tedium without the excitement that innovation can bring (2016).


References

Asseo, I., Johnson, M., Nilsson, B., Chalapathy, N., & Costello, T.J. (2016). The Internet of things: Riding the wave in higher education. Educause. Retrieved from: https://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/6/the-internet-of-things-riding-the-wave-in-higher-education


Elder, J. (2019). How Keven Ashton named the Internet of things. Retrieved from: https://blog.avast.com/kevin-ashton-named-the-internet-of-things

 Hello from Gary Bode,

I am currently working as the Director of Cyber Operations for a small project management consulting firm in Alexandria, VA. I am also a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor currently assigned as a cybersecurity subject matter expert with experience as a network administrator and a computer system installer for the past 25 years for a Business Enterprise project within the Department of the Army. Before becoming a Defense Contractor, I was in the U.S. Army as a Russian language Crypto-Intelligence Specialist for 20 years.

In addition to an M.A. in International Relations and an M.S. in Systems Management from USC, I hold the CISSP-ISSEP and CAP cybersecurity certificates. I also teach a full range of cybersecurity subjects to students intending to enter the cybersecurity field at various universities across the nation. My background in cybersecurity led me to begin work on a Doctor of Computer Science in Cybersecurity at Colorado Technical University. I am interested in learning additional cybersecurity techniques and conducting research in the cybersecurity domain beyond what I have already completed in previous courses. One of these interests led to the creation of this blog, what does the future of cybersecurity hold? This blog will be a discussion of future trends in cybersecurity. 

I am also interested in genealogy as a hobby, which involves considerable research. The research allows me to indulge in my favorite activities – history, travel, and computers. I do historical studies by analyzing the lives of my ancestors and what was happening at the time. I have traveled extensively to the places where they lived – Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri.