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