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Inventions by chance. Brilliant inventions made by accident (16 photos)

In 1928, the English bacteriologist Alexander Fleming conducted a routine study of the human body's defense against infectious diseases... As a result, quite by accident, he found out that common mold synthesizes a substance that destroys infectious agents, and discovered a molecule that he called penicillin.

And on September 13, 1929, at a meeting of the Medical Research Club at the University of London, Fleming presented his discovery.

Not all scientific discoveries were made after lengthy experiments and exhausting reflections. Researchers sometimes came up with completely unexpected results that were very different from those expected. And the result turned out to be much more interesting: so, in search of the philosopher's stone in 1669, the Hamburg alchemist Hennig Brand discovered white phosphorus. “Chance, God the Inventor,” as Alexander Pushkin called him, helped other researchers as well. We have collected ten such amazing examples.

1. Microwave

Raytheon Corporation engineer Percy Spencer worked on a radar project in 1945. While testing the magnetron, the scientist noticed that the chocolate in his pocket had melted. This is how Percy Spencer realized that microwave radiation can heat food. The same year, the Raytheon Corporation patented the microwave oven.

2. X-rays

Out of curiosity, placing his hand in front of the cathode-ray tube, in 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen and saw her image on a photographic plate, allowing you to examine almost every bone. So Wilhelm Roentgen discovered the method of the same name.

3. Sugar substitute

In fact, Konstantin Fahlberg studied coal tar. Once (his mother, apparently, did not teach him how to wash his hands before eating), he noticed that for some reason the bun seemed very sweet to him. Returning to the laboratory and tasting everything, he found the source. In 1884, Fahlberg patented saccharin and began mass production.

4. Pacemaker

In 1956, Wilson Greatbatch was developing a heartbeat recording device. By accidentally installing the wrong resistor in the device, he discovered that it was producing electrical impulses. This is how the idea of electrical heart stimulation was born. In May 1958, the first pacemaker was implanted in a dog.

Initially, lysergic acid diethylamide was planned to be used in pharmacology (hardly anyone now remembers exactly how). In November 1943, Albert Hoffman discovered a strange sensation while working with a chemical. He described them as follows: "I saw very bright light, streams of fantastic images of unreal beauty, accompanied by an intense kaleidoscopic set of colors." So Albert Hoffman gave the world a dubious gift.

6. Penicillin

After leaving a colony of staphylococcus bacteria in a Petri dish for a long time, Alexander Fleming noticed that the formed mold interferes with the growth of some bacteria. Chemically, the mold was a species of the fungus Penicillium notatum. So in the 40s of the last century, penicillin, the world's first antibiotic, was discovered.

Pfizer has been working on a new drug to treat heart disease. After clinical trials, it turned out that in this case, the new drug does not help at all. But there is by-effect that no one expected. This is how Viagra appeared.

8. Dynamite

Working with nitroglycerin, which was extremely unstable, Alfred Nobel accidentally dropped the test tube from his hands. But the explosion did not follow: after pouring out, nitroglycerin was absorbed into the wood shavings, which covered the floor of the laboratory. So the future father of the Nobel Prize understood: nitroglycerin must be mixed with an inert substance - and he got dynamite.

9. Safety glass

The carelessness of another scientist allowed another discovery to be made. Frenchman Edouard Benedictus dropped a test tube of cellulose nitrate solution on the floor. It shattered, but did not shatter into pieces. Cellulose nitrate became the basis for the first safety glass, which is now indispensable for the automotive industry.

10. Vulcanized rubber

Once Charles Goodyear poured nitrous acid over rubber to discolor it. He noticed that after that the rubber became much harder and at the same time more plastic. After reflecting on the result and improving the method, in 1844 Charles Goodyear patented it, naming it after Vulcan, the ancient Roman god of fire.

Ladchenko Natalia Grade 10 MAOU Secondary School No. 11, Kaliningrad 2013

Physics abstract

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Annotation.

Abstract "Accidental discovery".
Nomination "Amazing Nearby".

10 "A" class MAOU secondary school No. 11

In this essay, we have widely disclosed a topic affecting laws and discoveries, in particular, accidental discoveries in physics, their connection with the future of man. This topic seemed to us very interesting, because the accidents that led to the great discoveries of scientists happen to us every day.
We have shown that laws, including the laws of physics, play an extremely important role in nature. And they highlighted the fact that the laws of nature make our Universe knowable, subject to the power of the human mind.

They also talked about what a discovery is and tried to describe more specifically the classification of physics discoveries.

Then, they described all the discoveries with examples.

Focusing on random discoveries, we spoke more specifically about their significance in the life of mankind, about their history and authors.
To give you a more complete picture of how unforeseen discoveries happened and what they mean now, we turned to legends, refutations of discoveries, poetry and biographies of the authors.

Today, in the study of physics, this topic is relevant and interesting for research. In the course of studying the chances of discoveries, it became clear that sometimes we owe a breakthrough in science to an error that crept into calculations and scientific experiments, or not to the most pleasant character traits of scientists, for example, negligence and inaccuracy. So or not, you judge after reading the work.

Municipal autonomous educational institution of the city of Kaliningrad, secondary school №11.

Physics abstract:

« Accidental discoveries in physics "

In the category "Amazing Nearby"

Pupils of 10 "A" class.
Head: Bibikova I.N.

year 2012

Introduction ……………………………………………………… .... 3 p.

Classification of discoveries ………………………………… ..... 3 p.

Accidental discoveries ……………………………………… ..... 5 p.

The law of universal gravitation ………………………………… 5 p.

The law of buoyancy of bodies ………………………………………… ..11 p.

Animal electricity …………………………………… ... 15 p.

Brownian motion ………………………………………… 17 pp.

Radioactivity ……………………………………………… .18 p.

Unforeseen discoveries in everyday life ……… 20 pp.

Microwave oven ………………………………………… 22 p.

Appendix ……………………………………………………… 24 pages

List of used literature …………………………… 25 pages.

Nature laws - the skeleton of the universe. They support her, give her shape, bind her together. Together, they embody a breathtaking and majestic picture of our world. However, the most important thing, perhaps, is that the laws of nature make our Universe knowable, subject to the power of the human mind. In an era when we stop believing in our ability to control the things around us, they remind us that even the most complex systems obey simple laws that are understandable to an ordinary person.
The range of objects in the universe is incredibly wide - from stars, thirty times the mass of the sun, to microorganisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. These objects and their interactions make up what we call the material world. In principle, each object could exist according to its own set of laws, but such a universe would be chaotic and difficult to understand, although from the point of view of logic it is possible. And the fact that we do not live in such a chaotic universe has become more a consequence of the existence of the laws of nature.

But how do laws come about? What leads a person to the realization of a new pattern, to the creation of a new invention, to the discovery of something absolutely unfamiliar to this, etc.? Definitely a discovery. The discovery can take place in the process of observing nature - the first step to science, in the course of an experiment, experiment, calculations, or even ... by accident! We'll start with what discovery is.

Discovery-establishment of previously unknown objectively existing laws, properties and phenomena of the material world, making fundamental changes in the level of knowledge. A discovery is recognized as a scientific position, which is a solution to a cognitive problem and has a novelty on a global scale. Scientific guesses and hypotheses should be distinguished from discovery. A discovery is not recognized as the establishment of a single fact (also sometimes called a discovery), including geographical, archaeological, paleontological, mineral deposits, as well as the situation in the field of social sciences.

Classification of scientific discoveries.
Discoveries are:

Repeated (including simultaneous).

Predicted.

Unpredictable (random).

Premature.

Lagging.

Unfortunately, this classification does not include one very important section - errors that have become discoveries.

There is a certain category foreseen discoveries. Their appearance is associated with the high predictive power of the new paradigm, which was used for their predictions by those who made them. The predicted discoveries include the discovery of the satellites of Uranus, the discovery of inert gases, based on the predictions of the periodic table of elements developed by Mendeleev, he predicted them based on the periodic law. The discovery of Pluto, the discovery of radio waves based on Maxwell's prediction of the existence of another wave, belongs to the same category.

On the other hand, there are very interestingunforeseen, or as they are also called accidental discoveries. Their description came as a complete surprise to the scientific community. This is the discovery of X-rays, electric current, electron ... The discovery of radioactivity by A. Becquerel in 1896 could not have been foreseen, because dominated by the immutable truth about the indivisibility of the atom.

Finally, the so-called lagging discoveries, they were not implemented for an accidental reason, although the scientific community was ready to do so. The reason may be a delay in theoretical justification. Telescopes were used already in the 13th century, but it took 4 centuries to use 4 pairs at once instead of one pair of glasses and thus create a telescope.
Lag is associated with technical characters. So, the first laser started working only in 1960, although theoretically lasers could have been created immediately after the appearance of Einstein's work on the quantum theory of induced radiation.
Brownian motion is a very late discovery. It was done with a magnifying glass, although it has been 200 years since the microscope was invented in 1608.

In addition to the above discoveries, there are discoveries repeated. In the history of science, most fundamental discoveries related to the solution of fundamental problems was done by several scientists who, working in different countries, came to the same results. In the science of science, re-discoveries are being studied. R. Merton and E. Barber. They analyzed 264 historical re-discoveries. Most of 179 are binary, 51 ternary, 17 quaternary, 6 quintal, 8 hex.

Of particular interest are the casessimultaneous discoveries,that is, those cases when the discoverers were literally separated by hours. These include the Theory of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin and Wallace.

Premature discoveries.Such discoveries occur when the scientific community is unprepared to accept a given discovery and denies it or does not notice. Without the understanding of the discovery by the scientific community, it cannot be used in applied research, and then in technology. These include oxygen, Mendel's theory.

Accidental discoveries.

From historical data it becomes clear: some discoveries and inventions are the result of painstaking work, moreover, several scientists at once, other scientific discoveries were made completely by accident, or vice versa, hypotheses of discoveries were stored for many years.
If we talk about accidental discoveries, it is enough to recall the well-known apple that fell on Newton's bright head, after which he discovered universal gravitation. Archimedes' bath prompted the discovery of the law regarding the buoyancy force of bodies immersed in a liquid. And Alexander Fleming, accidentally bumped into mold, developed penicillin. It also happens that we owe a breakthrough in science to an error that has crept into calculations and scientific experiments, or not to the most pleasant character traits of scientists, for example, negligence and inaccuracy.

In the life of people, there are many accidents that they use, get a certain pleasure and do not even assume that it is necessary to thank His Majesty for this joy.

Let us dwell on the topic affecting random discoveries in the field of physics. We have conducted a small study of discoveries that have changed our life to some extent, such as Archimedes' law, microwave oven, radioactivity, X-rays, and many others. Do not forget that these discoveries were not planned. There are a lot of such accidental discoveries. How does such a discovery take place? What skills and knowledge do you need to have? Or are attention to detail and curiosity the keys to success? To answer these questions, we decided to familiarize ourselves with the history of accidental discoveries. They turned out to be exciting and educational.

Let's start with the most famous unforeseen discovery.

The law of universal gravitation.
When we hear the phrase “accidental discovery,” the same thought occurs to most of us. Of course, we all remember the well-knownNewton's apple.
More precisely, the famous story that once, while walking in the garden, Newton saw an apple fall from a branch (or an apple fell on a scientist's head) and this pushed him to the discovery of the law of universal gravitation.

This story has an interesting story. Not surprisingly, many science historians and scientists have tried to establish whether it is true. Indeed, for many it seems just a myth. Even today, with all the latest technologies and abilities in the field of science, it is difficult to judge the degree of reliability of this story. Let's try to argue that in this randomness there is still a place to be prepared for the thoughts of a scientist.
It is not difficult to assume that even before Newton, apples fell on the heads of a huge number of people, and from this they received only cones. After all, none of them thought about why the apples fall to the ground, are attracted to it. Or he thought, but did not bring his thoughts to a logical end. In my opinion, Newton discovered an important law, firstly, because he was Newton, and secondly, because he constantly thought about what forces make celestial bodies move, and at the same time be in equilibrium.
One of Newton's predecessors in the field of physics and mathematics, Blaise Pascal, expressed the idea that only trained people make random discoveries. It is safe to argue that a person whose head is not busy solving any problem or problem is unlikely to make an accidental discovery in it. Perhaps Isaac Newton, if he were a simple farmer and family man, would not have pondered why the apple fell, but only witnessed this very unopened law of gravitation, like many others before. Perhaps, if he were an artist, he would have taken a brush and painted a picture. But he was a physicist and was looking for answers to his questions. Therefore, he discovered the law. Stopping at this, we can conclude that the case, which is also called luck or luck, comes only to the one who is looking for it and who is constantly ready to make the most of the chance that has fallen to him.

Let's pay attention to the proof of this case, and the supporters of such an idea.

SI Vavilov, in his excellent biography of Newton, writes that this story, apparently, is reliable and is not a legend. In his reasoning, he refers to the testimony of Stuckley, a close acquaintance of Newton.
Here is what his friend William Steckley, who visited Newton on April 15, 1725 in London, tells in "Memories of the Life of Isaac Newton": "Since it was hot, we drank afternoon tea in the garden, in the shade of the spreading apple trees. There were only the two of us. Between us. by the way, he (Newton) told me that in exactly the same situation he first came up with the idea of gravity. It was caused by the fall of the apple, when he sat lost in thought. Why does an apple always fall vertically, he wondered to himself, why not to the side, but always to the center of the Earth. There must be an attractive force in matter, concentrated in the center of the Earth. If matter pulls other matter in this way, then there must be

proportionality to its quantity. Therefore, the apple attracts the Earth in the same way as the Earth attracts an apple. There must, therefore, be a force similar to what we call gravity, extending throughout the universe. "

Obviously, these reflections on gravity date back to 1665 or 1666, when Newton was forced to live in the countryside due to the outbreak of the plague in London. In Newton's papers, the following record was found about the "plague years": "... at that time I was in the prime of my inventive powers and thought about mathematics and philosophy more than ever after."

Stuckley's testimony was not widely known (Stuckley's memoirs were published only in 1936), but the famous French writer Voltaire, in a book published in 1738 and dedicated to the first popular presentation of Newton's ideas, gives a similar story. In doing so, he refers to the testimony of Katharina Barton, Newton's niece and companion, who lived next to him for 30 years. Her husband, John Conduit, who worked as Newton's assistant, wrote in his memoirs, relying on the story of the scientist himself: “In 1666, Newton was forced to return from Cambridge to his Woolsthorpe estate for a while, as there was a plague epidemic in London. Once he was resting in the garden, at the sight of a falling apple, the thought occurred to him that gravity is not limited by the surface of the Earth, but extends much further. Why not to the Moon? Only 20 years later (in 1687) were they published " Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy ", where Newton proved that the Moon is held in its orbit by the same gravitational force under the influence of which bodies fall to the surface of the Earth.

This story quickly gained popularity, but many doubted it.

The great Russian teacher KD Ushinsky, on the contrary, saw a deep meaning in the story of the apple. Contrasting Newton with the so-called secular people, he wrote:

“It took Newton's genius to suddenly be surprised that the apple fell to the ground. Omniscient people of the world are not surprised at such "vulgarities". They even consider surprise at such ordinary events a sign of a shallow, childish, not yet formed practical mind, although at the same time they themselves are often surprised by the actual vulgarity. "
In 1998, the Englishman Keesing, a lecturer at York University, who is fond of the history and philosophy of science, published an article "History of the Newtonian Apple" in the journal "Contemporary Physics" (English "Contemporary Physics"). Keesing is of the opinion that the legendary apple tree was the only one in Newton's garden, and gives stories and drawings with her images. The legendary tree survived Newton for almost a hundred years and died in 1820 during a severe thunderstorm. The armchair made from it is kept in England, in a private collection. This discovery, perhaps a real accident, served as a muse for some poets.

The Soviet poet Kaisyn Kuliev conveyed his thought in poetic form. He wrote a small, wise poem "Living Wondering":
“Great creations are born

Is it because sometimes somewhere

The ordinary are surprised by the phenomena

Scientists, artists, poets ”.

Here are a few more examples of how the story of the apple was reflected in fiction.

Newton's compatriot, the great English poet Byron, in his poem Don Giovanni, begins Canto 10 with the following two stanzas:
"It happened to the apple, falling, to interrupt

Newton's deep thoughts,

And they say (I will not answer

For the wise men guesses and teachings),

He found in this a way to prove

The force of gravity is very evident.

With a fall, therefore, only he is an apple

Was able to cope with Adam's times.

* * *

We fell from apples, but this fruit

Raised again the poor human race

(If the given episode is correct).

Newton's paved road

The suffering was relieved by the heavy oppression;

Since then, many discoveries have been made,

And, it is true, we will go to the moon someday,

(Thanks to the couples *), let us direct the way. "

Translated by I. Kozlov. In the original "steam engine".

Vladimir Alekseevich Soloukhin - a prominent representative of rural prose, in the poem "Apple" somewhat unexpectedly wrote on the same topic:

“I am convinced that Isaac Newton

The apple that opened

He is the law of gravity,

That he is his,

Ultimately, I ate it. "

Finally, Mark Twain gave the whole episode a humorous flavor. In the story "When I Served as Secretary," he writes:

“What is fame? Spawn of chance! Sir Isaac Newton discovered that apples fall to the ground - honestly, such trifling discoveries were made before him by millions of people. But Newton had powerful parents, and they fanned this banal case into an extraordinary event, and the simpletons took up their cry. And in an instant, Newton became famous. "
As it was written above, this case had and has many opponents who do not believe that the apple led the scientist to the discovery of the law. For many, this hypothesis has raised doubts. After the publication of Voltaire's book, in 1738, dedicated to the first popular presentation of Newton's ideas, controversy rained down, was it really so? It was believed that this is another invention of Voltaire, who was reputed to be one of the most witty people of his time. There were people who even outraged this story. The latter included the great mathematician Gauss. He said:

“The apple story is too simple; whether the apple fell or not is all the same; but I do not understand how it can be assumed that this case could have accelerated or slowed down such a discovery. Probably, it was like this: once a stupid and impudent man came to Newton and asked him how he could come to such a great discovery. Newton, seeing what kind of creature stood in front of him, and wanting to get rid of him, answered that an apple had fallen on his nose, and this completely satisfied the inquisitiveness of that gentleman. "

Here is another refutation of this case by historians, for whom the gap between the date the apple fell and the discovery of the law itself is suspiciously stretched.
An apple fell on Newton.

Rather, it is an invention, the historian is sure. - Although after the recollections of Newton's friend Stekeley, who allegedly from Newton's own words, that he was pushed into the law of universal gravitation by an apple that fell from an apple tree, this tree in the scientist's garden was a museum exhibit for almost a century. But another friend of Newton's, Pemberton, doubted the possibility of such an event. According to legend, the event with the falling apple took place in 1666. However, Newton discovered his law much later.

The biographers of the great physicist claim: if the fruit fell on the genius, it was only in 1726, when he was already 84 years old, that is, a year before his death. One of his biographers, Richard Westfall, remarks: “The date alone does not disprove the veracity of the episode. But, given Newton's age, it is somehow doubtful that he clearly remembered the conclusions drawn then, especially since in his writings he presented a completely different story. "

He composed the tale of a falling apple for his beloved niece Katerina Conduit in order to popularly explain to the girl the essence of the law that made him famous. For the arrogant physicist, Katerina was the only one in the family to whom he treated with warmth, and the only woman he ever approached (according to biographers, the scientist never knew physical intimacy with a woman). Even Voltaire wrote: "In my youth, I thought that Newton owed his own successes to his own merit ... Nothing of the kind: fluxions (used in solving equations) and universal gravitation would be useless without this lovely niece."

So did an apple fall on his head? Perhaps Newton told his legend to Voltaire's niece as a fairy tale, she passed it on to her uncle, and no one was going to doubt the words of Voltaire himself, his authority was quite high.

Another guess about this sounds like this: A year before his death, Isaac Newton began to tell his friends and family an anecdotal story about an apple. Nobody took her seriously, except for Newton's niece Catherine Conduit, who spread this myth.
It is difficult to understand whether this was a myth or an anecdotal story of Newton's niece, or a really plausible sequence of events that led physicist to the discovery of the law of universal gravitation. Newton's life, the history of his discoveries became the subject of close attention of scientists and historians. However, there are many contradictions in Newton's biographies; This is probably due to the fact that Newton himself was a very secretive person and even suspicious. And the moments in his life were not so frequent when he revealed his true face, his structure of thoughts, his passions. Scientists are still trying to recreate his life and, most importantly, his work using the surviving papers, letters, memories, but, as one of the English researchers of Newton's work noted, "this is largely the work of a detective."

Perhaps, Newton's secrecy, his unwillingness to let outsiders into his creative laboratory gave impetus to the emergence of the legend of the falling apple. However, based on the proposed materials, one can nevertheless draw the following conclusions:

What was certain about the apple story?
That, after graduating from college and receiving his bachelor's degree, Newton left Cambridge in the fall of 1665 to his home in Woolsthorpe. Cause? The plague epidemic that swept England - in the countryside, there is still less chance of infection. Now it is difficult to judge how necessary this measure was from a medical point of view; in any case, it was not superfluous. Although Newton was apparently in excellent health, by old age he

kept Thick hair, did not wear glasses and lost only one tooth - but who knows how the history of physics would have developed if Newton had stayed in the city.

What else was there? There was undoubtedly also a garden at the house, and in the garden - an apple tree, and it was autumn, and at this time of year apples, as you know, often spontaneously fall to the ground. Newton also had a habit of walking in the garden and thinking about the problems that worried him at that moment, he himself did not hide this: "I constantly keep in mind the subject of my research and patiently wait until the first glimpse gradually turns into a full and brilliant light." ... True, if we assume that it was at that time that he was illuminated by a glimpse of a new law (and we can now think so: in 1965 Newton's letters were published, in one of which he directly speaks about it), then the expectation of "full brilliant light" it took quite a long time - as much as twenty years. Because the law of universal gravitation was published only in 1687. Moreover, it is interesting that this publication was not made at the initiative of Newton, he was literally forced to express his views by his colleague in the Royal Society, Edmond Halley, one of the youngest and most gifted "virtuosos" - that is how people who were "sophisticated in the sciences" were called at that time. Under his pressure, Newton began to write his famous Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. First, he sent Halley a relatively small treatise "On Motion." So, perhaps, do not force Halley to state Newton's conclusions, the world heard this law not 20 years later, but much later, or heard from another scientist.

Newton received worldwide fame during his lifetime, he understood that everything he created was not the final victory of reason over the forces of nature, for the knowledge of the world is infinite. Newton died on March 20, 1727 at the age of 84. Shortly before his death, Newton said: “I don’t know how I can appear to the world, but to myself I seem only to be a boy playing on the shore, having fun by looking for a more colorful pebble than usual, or a beautiful shell, while while the great ocean of truth spreads before me unexplored. " ,,.

The law of buoyancy of bodies.

Another example of the accidental discovery can be called the discovery Archimedes' law ... The well-known "Eureka!" Belongs to his discovery. But more on that later. To begin with, let's dwell on who and what Archimedes is famous for.

Archimedes is an ancient Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer from Syracuse. He made many discoveries in geometry. He laid the foundations of mechanics, hydrostatics, the author of a number of important inventions. Already during the life of Archimedes, legends were created around his name, the reason for which was his

amazing inventions that made a stunning effect on contemporaries.

It is enough just to glance at the “know-how” of Archimedes in order to understand how much this person has overtaken his time and what our world could become if high technologies were assimilated in antiquity as quickly as today. Archimedes majored in mathematics and geometry, two of the most important sciences that underlie technical progress. The revolutionary nature of his research is evidenced by the fact that historians consider Archimedes one of the three greatest mathematicians of humanity. (The other two are Newton and Gauss)

If we are asked which discovery of Archimedes is the most important, we will begin to sort out - for example, his famous: "Give me a fulcrum and I will turn the Earth." Or the burning of the Roman fleet with mirrors. Or the definition of pi. Or the basics for integral calculus. Or a screw. But all the same, we will not be completely right. All the discoveries and inventions of Archimedes are extremely important for humanity. Because they gave a powerful impetus to the development of mathematics and physics, especially a number of branches of mechanics. But here's another interesting thing to note. Archimedes himself considered his highest achievement to be the definition of how the volumes of a cylinder, a sphere and a cone are related. Why? He explained simply. Because these are ideal figures. And it is important for us to know the ratio of ideal figures and their properties so that the principles that are embedded in them can be introduced into our far from ideal world.
"Eureka!" Who among us has not heard this famous exclamation? “Eureka!”, That is, found, exclaimed Archimedes, when he figured out how to find out the authenticity of the gold of the king's crown. And this law was discovered again by chance:
There is a story about how Archimedes was able to determine whether the crown of King Hieron was made of pure gold or the jeweler had mixed a significant amount of silver there. Specific gravity gold was known, but the difficulty was to accurately determine the volume of the crown: after all, it had an irregular shape.

Archimedes pondered this problem all the time. Once he was taking a bath, and then he came up with a brilliant idea: by immersing a crown in water, you can determine its volume by measuring the volume of water displaced by it. According to legend, Archimedes jumped out naked into the street shouting "Eureka!" And indeed at that moment the basic law of hydrostatics was discovered.

But how did he determine the quality of the crown? For this, Archimedes made two ingots: one of gold, the other of silver, each of the same weight as the crown. Then he put them one by one in a vessel with water, noted how much its level had risen. Having lowered the crown into the vessel, Archimedes found that its volume exceeds the volume of the ingot. So the master's dishonesty was proved.

Now Archimedes' law sounds like this:

A body immersed in a liquid (or gas) is subjected to a buoyant force equal to the weight of the liquid (or gas) displaced by this body. Strength is called the strength of Archimedes.
But what caused this accident: Archimedes himself, the crown, the weight of which had to be determined, or the bathroom, in which Archimedes? Although, it could have been all together. Is it possible that Archimedes was discovered only by chance? Or is the very preparation of the scientist involved in this at any time to find a solution to this issue? We can turn to Pascal's expression that only trained people make accidental discoveries. So, if he had just taken a bath, without thinking about the king's crown, he would hardly have noticed that the water is forced out of the bath by the weight of his body. But then he was Archimedes to notice it. Probably, it was he who was ordered to discover the basic law of hydrostatics. If you think about it, we can conclude that some chain of obligatory events leads to the accidental discovery of laws. It turns out that these most accidental discoveries are not so accidental. Archimedes had to take a bath to accidentally discover the law. And before he accepted it, his thoughts had to be preoccupied with the problem of the weight of gold. And at the same time, one must be obligatory for the other. But it cannot be argued that he would not have been able to resolve the issue if he had not taken a bath. But if there was no need to calculate the mass of gold in the crown, Archimedes would have been in no hurry to discover this law. He would just take a bath.
This is the complex mechanism of our, so to speak, accidental discovery. A lot of reasons led to this very accident. And finally, under ideal conditions for the discovery of this law (it is easy to pay attention to how the water rises when the body sinks, we have all seen this process) a prepared person, in our example, Archimedes, just grabbed this thought in time.

However, many doubt that the discovery of the law was exactly the case. There is a refutation to this. It sounds like this: in reality, the water displaced by Archimedes does not say anything about the famous buoyancy force, since the method described in the myth only allows you to measure the volume. This myth was spread by Vitruvius, and no one else reported this story.

Be that as it may, we know that there was Archimedes, there was a bath of Archimedes and there was a king's crown. Unfortunately, no one can make unambiguous conclusions, therefore, we will call the accidental discovery of Archimedes a legend. And whether it is true or not, everyone can decide for himself.

Scientist, honored teacher and poet Mark Lvovsky wrote a poem dedicated to the famous occasion of science with a scientist.

Archimedes' law

Archimedes discovered the law

Somehow he washed in the bath,

Water poured onto the floor

Then he guessed.

The force acts on the body

So nature wanted

The ball flies like an airplane

What does not sink, then floats!

And the load will become lighter in the water,

And he will stop drowning

Oceans along the Earth

Conquer ships!

All Roman historians describe in great detail the defense of the city of Syracuse during the Second Punic War. They say that it was Archimedes who guided it and inspired the Syracuse people. And he was seen on all the walls. They say about his amazing machines, with the help of which the Greeks defeated the Romans, and they did not dare to attack the city for a long time. The following verse adequately describes the moment of the death of Archimedes, during that very Punic war:

K. Ankundinov. Death of Archimedes.

He was thoughtful and calm,

He is fascinated by the mystery of the circle ...

Above him is an ignorant warrior

Swung a robber sword.

The thinker drew with inspiration,

Only the heart was squeezed by a heavy load.

"Is it possible for my creations to burn

Among the ruins of Syracuse? "

And Archimedes thought: “I will

Am I head to laugh at the enemy? "

He took a compass with a firm hand -

Made the last arc.

Already the dust was swirling over the road,

That way into slavery, into the yoke of chains.

"Kill me, but don't touch me,

O barbarian, these drawings! "

Streets of centuries have passed.

The scientific feat is not forgotten.

Nobody knows who the killer is.

But everyone who was killed knows!

No, not always funny and narrow

The wise man, deaf to the affairs of the earth:

Already on the raid in Syracuse

The ships were standing by the Romans.

Over the mathematician curly

The soldier raised a short knife

And he is on a sandy shallow

I entered the circle into the drawing.

Ah, if death were a dashing guest -

I was also lucky to meet

Like Archimedes who drew with a cane

In the moment of death - the number!

Animal electricity.

The next discovery is the discovery of electricity inside living organisms. In our table, this discovery is of an unexpected kind, however, the process itself was also not planned and everything happened according to the familiar "accident".
The discovery of electrophysiology belongs to the scientist Luigi Galvani.
L. Galvani was an Italian physician, anatomist, physiologist and physicist. He is one of the founders of electrophysiology and the theory of electricity, the founder of experimental electrophysiology.

This is how what we call an accidental discovery happened.

At the end of 1780, professor of anatomy in Bologna, Luigi Galvani, was studying the nervous system of prepared frogs in his laboratory, which had croaked in a nearby pond yesterday.

Quite by chance it happened that in the room where in November 1780 Galvani studied their nervous system on preparations of frogs, his friend, a physicist who performed experiments with electricity, also worked. Absent-mindedly, Galvani laid one of the prepared frogs on the table of an electric machine.

At this time, Galvani's wife entered the room. Her eyes appeared creepy picture: when sparks in an electric machine, the legs of a dead frog, touching an iron object (scalpel), twitched. Galvani's wife pointed this out to her husband with horror.

Let's follow Galvani in his famous experiments: “I cut open the frog and put it, without any intent, on the table, where at some distance there was an electric machine. Accidentally, one of my assistants touched the frog's nerve with the tip of a scalpel, and at the same moment the frog's muscles shuddered as if in convulsions.

Another assistant, who usually helped me in my experiments on electricity, noticed that this phenomenon occurred only when a spark was drawn from the conductor of the car.

Struck by the new phenomenon, I immediately turned my attention to it, although at that moment I was planning something completely different and was completely absorbed in my thoughts. I was seized by an incredible thirst and eagerness to explore this and shed light on what was hidden underneath. "

Galvani decided it was all about electrical sparks. To get a stronger effect, he hung several prepared frog legs on copper wires on an iron garden grate during a thunderstorm. However, lightning - giant electrical discharges did not affect the behavior of the prepared frogs in any way. What the lightning failed to do, the wind did. With gusts of wind, the frogs swayed on their wires and sometimes touched the iron grate. As soon as this happened, the legs twitched. Galvani, however, attributed the phenomenon to lightning electrical discharges.

In 1786 L. Galvani announced that he had discovered the "animal" electricity. The Leiden Bank was already known - the first condenser (1745). A. Volta invented the aforementioned electrophoretic machine (1775), B. Franklin explained the electrical nature of lightning. The idea of biological electricity was in the air. L. Galvani's message was greeted with immoderate enthusiasm, which he fully shared. In 1791, his main work, "A Treatise on the Forces of Electricity in Muscular Contraction", was published.

Here's another story about how he noticed biological electricity. But it naturally differs from the previous one. This story is kind of a curiosity.

The wife of an anatomy professor at the University of Bologna, Luigi Galvani, who caught a cold, like all patients, demanded care and attention. Doctors prescribed her a "strengthening broth", which included those very frog legs. And so, in the process of preparing frogs for broth, Galvani noticed how the legs moved when they came into contact with an electric machine. Thus, he discovered the famous "living electricity" - electric current.
Be that as it may, Galvani pursued slightly different

goals. He studied the structure of frogs, and discovered electrophysiology. Or, even more interesting, I wanted to cook broth for my wife, make her something useful, but made a discovery that is useful to all mankind. And all why? In both cases, the frogs' legs accidentally touched an electric machine or some other electrical object. But did everything turn out so accidentally and unexpectedly, or, again, was it an obligatory interconnection of events? ...

Brownian motion.

From our table, we can see that Brownian motion is one of the belated discoveries in physics. But we will dwell on this discovery, since it was also to some extent made by accident.

What is Brownian Motion?
Brownian motion is a consequence of the chaotic movement of molecules. The reason for the Brownian motion is the thermal motion of the molecules of the medium and their collision with the Brownian particle.

This phenomenon was discovered by R. Brown (in honor of him and the discovery was named), when in 1827, when he was conducting research on plant pollen. Scottish botanist Robert Brown, during his lifetime, as the best connoisseur of plants, received the title of "Prince of Botanists". He made many wonderful discoveries. In 1805, after a four-year expedition to Australia, he brought to England about 4000 species of Australian plants unknown to scientists and devoted many years to their study. Described plants brought from Indonesia and Central Africa. He studied plant physiology, for the first time described in detail the nucleus of a plant cell. Petersburg Academy of Sciences made him an honorary member. But the name of the scientist is now widely known not at all because of these works.

This is how Brown happened to notice the movement inherent in molecules. It turns out, trying to work on one, Brown noticed a little different:

In 1827 Brown conducted research on plant pollen. He, in particular, was interested in how pollen participates in the fertilization process. Once he examined under a microscope the elongated cytoplasmic grains suspended in water, isolated from the cells of the pollen of the North American plant Clarkia pulchella. And so, unexpectedly, Brown saw that the smallest solid grains, which could hardly be seen in a drop of water, were constantly trembling and constantly moving from place to place. He found that these movements, in his words, "are not associated either with flows in the liquid, or with its gradual evaporation, but are inherent in the particles themselves." At first, Brown even thought that living things really got into the field of the microscope, especially since the pollen is the male germ cells of plants, but particles from dead plants behaved the same way, even from those dried up a hundred years earlier in herbariums.

Then Brown wondered if these were the "elementary molecules of living things", about which the famous French naturalist Georges Buffon (1707-1788), the author of the 36-volume Natural History, spoke. This assumption was dropped when Brown began to investigate apparently inanimate objects; very small particles of coal, soot and dust of the London air, finely ground inorganic substances: glass, many different minerals.

Brown's observation has been confirmed by other scientists.

Moreover, I must say that Brown did not have any of the latest microscopes. In his article, he specifically emphasizes that he had conventional biconvex lenses, which he had been using for several years. And he writes further: "Throughout the study, I continued to use the same lenses with which I began to work to give more credibility to my claims and to make them as accessible as possible to ordinary observation."
Brownian motion is considered a very belated discovery. It was done with a magnifying glass, although it's been 200 years since the microscope was invented (1608)

As is often the case in science, many years later, historians discovered that back in 1670, the Dutchman Anthony Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the microscope, apparently observed a similar phenomenon, but the rarity and imperfection of microscopes, the embryonic state of molecular science at that time did not attract attention to the observation of Leeuwenhoek, therefore the discovery is rightly attributed to Brown, who first studied and described it in detail.

Radioactivity.

Antoine Henri Becquerel was born on December 15, 1852, died on August 25, 1908. He was a French physicist, Nobel laureate in physics and one of the pioneers of radioactivity.

The phenomenon of radioactivity was another accidental discovery. In 1896, the French physicist A. Becquerel, while working on the study of uranium salts, wrapped the fluorescent material in an opaque material along with photographic plates.

He found that the photographic plates were completely blown out. The scientist continued his research and found that all uranium compounds emit radiation. The continuation of Becquerel's work was the discovery in 1898 of radium by Pierre and Marie Curie. The atomic mass of radium is not that much different from that of uranium, but its radioactivity is a million times higher. The phenomenon of radiation was called radioactivity. In 1903 Becquerel, together with the Curies, received the Nobel Prize in Physics "In recognition of the outstanding services expressed in the discovery of spontaneous radioactivity." This was the beginning of the atomic era.

Another of the important discoveries of physics related to the section of the unpredictable is the discovery of X-rays. Now, after many years of this discovery, X-rays are of great importance to humanity.
The first and most widely known field of X-ray application is medicine. X-rays have become common tools for trauma doctors, dentists, and other medical professionals.

Another industry where X-ray equipment is widely used is safety. So, at airports, customs and other checkpoints, the principle of using X-rays is practically the same as in modern medicine. The beams are used to detect prohibited items in baggage and other cargo. IN last years small autonomous devices have appeared, which make it possible to detect suspicious objects in crowded places.
Let's talk about the history of the discovery of X-rays.

X-rays were discovered in 1895. The method of their production reveals their electromagnetic nature with particular clarity. German physicist Roentgen (1845-1923) discovered this type of radiation by accident, while studying cathode rays.

Roentgen's observation was as follows. He worked in a darkened room, trying to figure out whether the newly discovered cathode rays or not (they are still used today - in televisions, in fluorescent lamps, etc.) can pass through a vacuum tube or not. By chance, he noticed that a diffuse greenish cloud had appeared on the chemically cleaned screen several feet away. It was as if a faint flash from an induction coil were reflected in a mirror. For seven weeks he spent research, practically without leaving the laboratory. It turned out that the cause of the glow is direct rays emanating from the cathode ray tube, that the radiation gives a shadow, and it cannot be deflected with a magnet - and much more. It also became clear that human bones cast a denser shadow than the surrounding soft tissue, which is still used in fluoroscopy. And the first X-ray picture appeared in 1895 - it was a picture of Madame Roentgen's hand with a clearly visible gold ring. So for the first time it was men who saw women through and through, and not vice versa.

These are the useful random discoveries the Universe has presented to humanity!

And this is just a small fraction of useful random discoveries and inventions. You cannot tell at a time how many there were. And how much more will be ... But to learn about the discoveries that have taken place in everyday life would also be

Helpful.

Unforeseen discoveries in our daily life.

Chocolate Chip Cookies.
One of the most popular types of cookies in the United States is chocolate chip cookies. It was invented in the 1930s when innkeeper Ruth Wakefield decided to bake butter biscuits. A woman broke a chocolate bar and mixed the pieces of chocolate with the dough, hoping that the chocolate would melt and give the dough Brown color and a chocolatey flavor. However, Wakefield let down ignorance of the laws of physics, and from the oven she took out cookies with pieces of chocolate.

Sticky notes for notes.
The sticky papers are the result of an unsuccessful experiment to improve the durability of the glue. In 1968, an employee of the 3M research laboratory tried to improve the quality of the adhesive tape (scotch tape). He received a dense glue that did not absorb into the glued surfaces and was completely useless for the production of adhesive tape. The researcher did not know how the new type of adhesive could be used. Four years later, a colleague who sang in a church choir in his spare time was annoyed that the bookmarks in the book of psalms fell out all the time. Then he remembered about the glue that could fix paper bookmarks without damaging the pages of the book. In 1980, Post-it Notes were first released for sale.

Coca Cola.
1886 year. Pharmacist Dr. John Pemberton is looking for a way to prepare a tonic potion using the cola nut and the coca plant. The mixture tasted very good. He took this syrup to the pharmacy, where it was sold. And Coca-Cola itself appeared by accident. The seller at the pharmacy confused the taps with regular water and soda and poured a second one. This is how Coca-Cola was born. True, at the beginning it was not very popular. Pemberton's expenses exceeded revenues. But now it is drunk in more than two hundred countries of the world.

Garbage bag.
In 1950, the inventor Harry Vasilyuk created such a bag. Here is how it was. The city administration approached him with a task: to come up with a way in which the garbage would not be thrown out during the process of being immersed in a garbage truck. He had an idea to create a special vacuum cleaner. But someone dropped the phrase: I need a trash bag. And suddenly he realized that for the garbage you need to make disposable

bags, and to save money, make them from polyethylene. And 10 years later, bags for private individuals appeared on sale.

Supermarket trolley.
As well as other discoveries in this post, it was discovered by accident in 1936. Sylvan Goldman, the inventor of the trolley, began to notice that customers rarely buy bulky items, citing the fact that they are difficult to carry to the checkout. But once in the store, he saw how the son of a customer rolled a bag with groceries on a typewriter by a string. And then he was enlightened. Initially, he simply attached small wheels to the baskets. But then he attracted a group of designers to create a modern trolley. After 11 years, the mass production of such carts began. And by the way, thanks to this innovation, a new type of store has appeared called the supermarket.

Raisin buns.
In Russia, a delicacy was also created by mistake. This happened in the royal kitchen. The chef made buns, kneaded the dough, and accidentally touched a barrel of raisins that fell into the dough. He was very scared, he could not pull out the raisins. But the fear did not justify itself. The sovereign really liked the buns with raisins, for which the chefs were awarded.
It is also worth mentioning here the legend described by the Moscow expert journalist and writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky, that the famous baker Ivan Filippov invented the raisin bun. Governor-General Arseny Zakrevsky, who somehow bought a fresh cod, suddenly found a cockroach in it. Summoned to the carpet Filippov, grabbed the insect and ate it, saying that the general was mistaken - it was a highlight. Returning to the bakery, Filippov ordered to urgently start baking buns with raisins in order to justify himself before the governor.

Artificial sweeteners

The three most common sugar substitutes were discovered only because scientists forgot to wash their hands. Cyclamate (1937) and aspartame (1965) were a byproduct of medical research, and saccharin (1879) was accidentally discovered in studies of coal tar derivatives.

Coca Cola

potion and realized that it tasted good. Pemberton believed that this syrup could help people suffering from fatigue, stress and toothache. The pharmacist took the syrup to the largest pharmacy in the city of Atlanta. On the same day, the first portions of syrup were sold, at five cents a glass. However, the Coca-Cola drink came about as a result of negligence. By chance, the seller, who was diluting the syrup, confused the taps and poured carbonated water instead of ordinary water. The resulting mixture became "Coca-Cola". Initially, this drink was not very successful. In its first year of soda production, Pemberton spent $ 79.96 on advertising a new drink, but was able to sell only $ 50 of Coca-Cola. Nowadays Coca-Cola is produced and drunk in 200 countries of the world.

13. Teflon

How did the invention of the microwave come about?

Percy LeBaron Spencer is a scientist, inventor who invented the first microwave oven. He was born on July 9, 1984 in Howland Maine, USA.

How the microwave was invented.

Spencer invented the microwave cooking appliance by accident. In the Raytheon laboratory in 1946, when he was standing near

magnetron, he suddenly felt a tingling sensation and that the lollipops in his pocket were melting. He was not the first to notice this effect, but others were afraid to conduct experiments, while Spencer was curious and interested in doing such research.

He placed the corn next to the magnetron and after a certain time it began to crack. Observing this effect, he made a metal box with a magnetron for heating food. This is how Percy Laberon Spencer invented the microwave.

After writing a report on its findings, Raytheon patented the discovery in 1946 and began selling microwave ovens for industrial purposes.

In 1967, the Raytheon Amana subsidiary began selling RadarRange home microwave ovens. Spencer received no royalties for his invention, but he was paid a one-off $ 2 allowance from Raytheon - a token payment made by the company to all of the company's inventors.

Bibliography.

Http://shkolyaram.narod.ru/interesno3.html

Application.

Velcro or Velcro

In 1941, the Swiss inventor George de Mestral was walking his dog. When they returned home, it turned out that George's coat, like the dog's coat, was covered with burdock. Having examined the burdock under a microscope, George examined the hooks with which the plant was attached to the dog's fur just not “tightly.” He himself made two ribbons with the same small hooks that would cling to each other - an alternative fastener turned out! But the mass production of "stickies" will come only after 14 years. Astronauts were the first to adopt them - spacesuits are buttoned on them.

Cellophane

In 1908, Jacques Brandenberger, a Swiss chemist working in the textile industry, tried to create a moisture-proof coating for kitchen tablecloths to protect them from stains. The coating in the form of liquid viscose turned out to be too tough for this purpose, but Jacques felt the potential of this product and suggested using it for packaging products. But it took him another 10 years to design a machine for the production of cellophane.

X-rays or X-Rays

These rays were discovered in 1895 by the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. He worked in a darkened room, trying to figure out whether the recently discovered cathode rays (they are still used today - in televisions, in fluorescent lamps, etc.) can pass through a vacuum tube or not. By chance, he noticed that a diffuse greenish cloud had appeared on the chemically cleaned screen several feet away. It was as if a faint flash from an induction coil were reflected in a mirror. For seven weeks he spent research, practically without leaving the laboratory. It turned out that the cause of the glow is direct rays emanating from the cathode ray tube, that the radiation gives a shadow, and it cannot be deflected with a magnet - and much more. It also became clear that human bones cast a denser shadow than the surrounding soft tissue, which is still used in fluoroscopy. And the first X-ray picture appeared in 1895 - it was a picture of Madame Roentgen's hand with a clearly visible gold ring. So for the first time it was men who saw women through and through, and not vice versa.

Safety glass

Today it is known everywhere, but when the French scientist Edouard Benedictus in 1903, while working in the laboratory, accidentally dropped an empty glass flask on the floor and it did not break, he was very surprised. The walls of the flask, of course, were covered with a network of cracks, but it did not break into pieces. It turned out that before that, a collodion solution (a solution of cellulose nitrates in a mixture of ethanol and ethyl ether) was stored in the flask, the solution evaporated, but the walls of the vessel were covered with a thin layer of it. At that time, the automotive industry was developing in France, the windshield was made of ordinary glass - this was the cause of many injuries to drivers. Benidicuts saw real life-saving benefits in using his invention in a car, but automakers found it too expensive to manufacture. It was only years later, after WW 1 used triplex as a glass for gas masks, in 1944 Volvo used it in cars.

Penicillin

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. He was not actually looking for it at the time, but simply researching the flu. He was not very neat, did not wash laboratory glassware immediately after the experiment, and did not throw out flu cultures for 2-3 weeks in a row, accumulating 30-40 cups on his desk at a time. So, one day he found mold in one of the Petri dishes, which, to his surprise, suppressed a seeded culture of staphylococcus bacteria. The mold, which was infected with the culture, belonged to a very rare species. Most likely, it was brought in from a laboratory located one floor below, where mold samples taken from the homes of patients with bronchial asthma were grown. Fleming left the cup that later became famous on the laboratory table and went to rest. A cold snap in London created favorable conditions for the growth of mold, and the subsequent warming - for bacteria. As it turned out later, it was precisely these circumstances that owed the famous discovery - and not only of the 20th century - to penicillin, which saved and is still saving the life and health of an incredible number of people. When Fleming died, he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral in London - next to the most revered British, and in Greece the day of his death was declared national mourning.

Vulcanized rubber

When Columbus first brought rubber balls from the West Indies in 1546, it was like a magical discovery. But this miracle had its drawbacks: the rubber rotted, smelled, was too sticky when warm - and too hard when cold. Therefore, people did not understand at the time where it can be applied. Almost 300 years later - in 1839 - Charles Goodyear solved this problem. In his chemical laboratory, he tried to mix rubber with magnesia, lime, nitric acid - all in vain. The next attempt to mix rubber with sulfur also ended in failure. But, suddenly, quite by accident, these rubber and sulfur were dropped on a hot oven - this is how elastic rubber was obtained, from which balls, galoshes and car tires are now produced.

Popsicle

Frank Epperson, the inventor of this invention, was only eleven years old when he came up with what some would later call one of the most important inventions of the 20th century. Of course, Lady Luck most likely smiled at this boy when he dissolved soda powder in water - a popular drink of the children of 1905. It didn't work out right away, and Frank, without removing the stirring stick from the glass, set it aside for a while. The weather was frosty and the mixture froze. Frank laughingly showed his classmates a funny frozen thing on a stick that you could lick with your tongue. Eighteen years later, Frank remembered this funny incident and began to produce Epsicles ice cream in seven flavors. Today, in America alone, more than three million popsicle pops are sold annually.

Super glue

Superglue, or Krazy Glue, is a substance actually called "cyanoacrylate (cyanoacrylate)" It was invented by accident dr. Harry Coover, who in the laboratory during World War II (1942) searched for clear plastic for gun scopes. The resulting cyanoacrylate did not solve his problems, since it quickly hardened, glued to anything and spoiled laboratory equipment. But, many years later, in 1958, he realized that his invention could benefit mankind. The most real benefit was the ability to instantly seal the wounds - this saved the lives of many soldiers during the Vietnam War - with the sealed wounds, they could be transported to the hospital. By the way, in 1959, the extraordinary abilities of the glue were demonstrated to America when the host of the program was lifted into the air with the help of two steel plates glued together with just a drop of glue. Later, everything was lifted into the air - from TVs to a car (!).

Scotchgard protective material

In 1953, Patsy Sherman, an employee of the same 3M corporation, worked on a rubber material that had to withstand contact with aviation fuel. A sloppy lab technician spilled one of her experimental compounds on her new tennis shoes. She was upset at first because she couldn't clean his shoes off with soap or rubbing alcohol, but that failure also inspired Sherman. She set to work and a year later the now well-known Scotchgard product was released on the market, which protects surfaces from contamination - both fabrics and cars.

Sticky notes - post-it notes

In 1970, Spencer Silver, who worked for 3M Corporation (Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing), tried to develop a super strong adhesive. What he managed to get was the exact opposite: the glue smeared on the surface of the paper, and if it was glued to something, it fell off after a while, leaving no marks on the surface. Four years later, an employee of the same company, Arthur Fry, who sang in the church choir in order to quickly find the desired text, came up with the idea of gluing bookmarks to the book with psalms, smeared with these composition - otherwise they easily fell out of it. Since 1980 - the beginning of the release of post-it notes - to this day, it is one of the most popular office products.

Raisin buns

It is also worth mentioning here the legend described by the Moscow expert journalist and writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky, that the famous baker Ivan Filippov invented the raisin bun. Governor-General Arseny Zakrevsky, who once bought a fresh cod, suddenly found a cockroach in it. Summoned to the carpet Filippov, grabbed the insect and ate it, saying that the general was mistaken - it was a highlight. Returning to the bakery, Filippov ordered to urgently start baking buns with raisins in order to justify himself before the governor.

Potato chips

Chef George Crum invented the popular snack in 1853. When one of his clients complained that his potatoes were cut too thick, he took the potatoes, cut them into pieces almost as thick as a sheet of paper, and fried them. Thus the chips were born.

Brandy

In the Middle Ages, wine merchants often evaporated the water from the transported drink so that it did not spoil and take up less space. Soon, someone resourceful decided to skip the recovery phase. Brandy was born.

Artificial sweeteners

microwaves

Microwave emitters (magnetrons) operated on Allied radars during World War II. New applications were discovered in 1946, when a magnetron melted a chocolate bar in the pocket of Percy Spencer, one of the engineers at the American company Raytheon.

Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann became the first person to taste "acid" in 1943. He noticed the effect of lysergic acid diethylamide on himself when he was doing medical research on this substance and its effect on the process of childbirth.

Viagra

As you know, Viagra was originally developed as a remedy for angina. Men all over the world should be grateful to the people of the Welsh city of Merthyr Tydefil. It was here in 1992 that a remarkable side effect of the drug was discovered during trials.

Champagne

The honor of inventing the world's most popular wine - champagne - is credited to the Benedictine monk Pierre Perignon from the Abbey of Hauteville (Champagne, France). But few people know that such a brilliant invention was made almost by accident: at that time, the presence of bubbles in wine was considered a sign of a bad winemaker. As a housekeeper at the abbey and in charge of food supplies and a cellar, Perignon experimented with the production of various wines and tried to create a white wine from red grapes. Red grapes ripened better in Champagne, and white wine was more popular at the court of the French king, and then the monk invented a method of obtaining juice white from red grapes. However, due to the cool climate of the province, the wine had to extend the fermentation process for two years, which caused gas bubbles to form in the drink, and barrels often exploded. The monk suggested storing wine in the first year in barrels, and in the second year in bottles, thus protecting the wine from "explosion". For several more years, Pierre Perignon, through experiments, tried to completely get rid of the bubbles, but in vain. Luckily for him (and for us), the new sparkling wine has gained immense popularity at court.

Waffle cone

Before the invention of the waffle cone, ice cream was served on plates or in bowls. The "father" of the ice cream cone was Ernest Humvee, a Syrian who traded waffles at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. The owner of a nearby kiosk was selling ice cream, and the product was so popular with visitors that he ran out of plates. Humvee suggested that they join forces and use rolled waffles instead of plates, in which you can put ice cream balls. I liked the novelty, and the agile Syrian created the first company for the production of waffle cones - the Cornucopia Waffle Company.

Rocking chair

American President Benjamin Franklin once saw a baby being rocked in a cradle and turned a regular chair into a rocking chair.
The British have a saying: "He is as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room with five rocking chairs."

Sandwiches

If it were not for the Earl of Sandwich's passion for gambling, we would not know how to cook closed sandwiches. The count categorically did not want to tear herself away from the card table, even for lunch, so the servants brought him sandwiches right into the card room. And they covered them (with a second piece of bread), so that it was convenient to carry and so that the cards did not get dirty.

Discoveries in a dream

It turns out that this is not only the periodic table. Likewise, chemist Kekule, while dozing in an armchair in front of a fireplace in his laboratory, dreamed of the basis of organic chemistry - the benzene ring.

The famous indigo dye used to dye jeans

Also received by accident.
One of the stages of obtaining this dye is the oxidation of naphthalene, so this thing is useful not only for moths. And mercury is also needed - just when the thermometer crashed, the chemist Karl Heinmann received the missing link in the indigo synthesis reaction, over which he fought for almost 15 years.

To the discovery of iodine an ordinary domestic cat put its paw: at a nitrate plant, she accidentally knocked a can of sulfuric acid into a waste boiler, and everyone saw a beautiful purple vapor, which then crystallized. This was iodine (the cat, thank God, survived).

Garbage bag

Harry Wasylyk invented the first garbage bag in 1950. Vasilyuk was an inventor and engineer, and once the municipality of the city approached him, which set the task: to make sure that household waste does not spill out during the loading of garbage collection machines. Vasilyuk thought for a long time about creating a semblance of a vacuum cleaner, but the decision came suddenly. Someone from his friends or family (versions differ) threw the phrase: “I need a garbage bag!”. Vasilyuk realized that disposable bags should be used for garbage operations and suggested making them out of polyethylene. The first plastic garbage bags were used by the Winnipeg hospital. The first garbage bags intended for individuals appeared in the 1960s. Now one of the most important problems that mankind has to solve is waste disposal.

Antibiotics

In 1928, scientist Alexander Fleming noticed that penicillin mold had infected one of his samples with the pathogenic bacteria staphylococcus, left by an open window. Fleming examined the sample under a microscope and noticed that the mold was killing bacteria. The importance of Fleming's discovery became clear only in 1940, when the world began mass research of a new type of drugs - antibiotics. Nowadays antibiotics are widely used in medicine; they make up 15% of all drugs sold in the world.

Supermarket trolley

Merchant Sylvan Goldman invented the first shopping trolley in 1936. Goldman was the owner of a large grocery store in Oklahoma City and noticed that shoppers were reluctant to buy certain items because they were difficult to carry. The discovery was accidental: Goldman noticed how one customer had put a heavy bag on a toy car that her son was rolling on a string. The merchant first attached small wheels to an ordinary basket, and then brought in mechanics to help and created a prototype of a modern cart. The mass production of this device began in 1947. The invention of the trolley allowed the creation of a new type of store - a supermarket.

Pacemaker

This device, which has saved the lives of millions of people with heart disease, was invented by accident. In 1941, engineer John Hopps was commissioned by the Navy to conduct research on hypothermia. He was tasked with finding a way to warm up as quickly as possible a person who had been in the cold for a long time or in cold water... Hopps tried to use high-frequency radio waves for warming up and accidentally discovered that a heart that stopped beating as a result of hypothermia could be "restarted" if it was stimulated with electrical impulses. In 1950, based on the discovery of Hopps, the first pacemaker was created. It was large and uncomfortable; its use sometimes led to the appearance of burns on the patient's body.

Medic Wilson Greatbatch made his second accidental opening. He worked on creating a device that was supposed to record heartbeat... One day, he accidentally inserted an unsuitable resistor into the device and noticed that oscillations arose in the electrical circuit, reminiscent of the rhythm of the human heart. Two years later, Greatbatch created the first implantable pacemaker that delivers artificial pulses to stimulate the heart.

Coca Cola

In 1886, doctor and pharmacist John Pemberton tried to prepare a potion based on the extract from the leaves of the South American plant coca and African cola nuts, which have tonic properties. Pemberton tasted the ready-made potion and realized that it tasted good. Pemberton believed that this syrup could help people suffering from fatigue, stress and toothache. The pharmacist took the syrup to the largest pharmacy in the city of Atlanta. On the same day, the first portions of syrup were sold, at five cents a glass. However, the Coca-Cola drink came about as a result of negligence. By chance, the seller, who was diluting the syrup, confused the taps and poured carbonated water instead of ordinary water. The resulting mixture became "Coca-Cola". Initially, this drink was not very successful. In its first year of soda production, Pemberton spent $ 79.96 on advertising a new drink, but was able to sell only $ 50 of Coca-Cola. Nowadays Coca-Cola is produced and drunk in 200 countries of the world.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of the most popular types of cookies in the United States is chocolate-chip cookies. It was invented in the 1930s when innkeeper Ruth Wakefield decided to bake butter biscuits. The woman broke a chocolate bar and mixed the pieces of chocolate with the dough, hoping that the chocolate would melt and give the dough a brown color and a chocolatey flavor. However, Wakefield let down ignorance of the laws of physics, and from the oven she took out cookies with pieces of chocolate.

Discovery of America Christopher Columbus also happened quite by accident. In fact, Columbus was sailing towards Asia ...

It is interesting how far progress could have gone if Aristarchus of Samos in the ill century. BC e. was heard by contemporaries and people learned almost 2 millennia earlier that the Earth, along with other planets, revolves around the Sun?

We can say that modern world is just the result of a consistent chain of discoveries and inventions made by man over the millennia. When it comes to discoveries, the imagination immediately draws a naked Archimedes jumping out of the bathtub or an apple that fell from a branch onto Newton's head. Periodic table of elements, dreamed of
Mendeleev, or America, accidentally discovered by Columbus - what is it? Luck, surprise, miracle, or is it a regularity, which is based on a persistent desire to expand the horizons of knowledge?

Many discoveries took by surprise not only the researchers who made them, but the entire scientific community. Apparently, that is why the fame of the random was entrenched for them, although in reality they were simply unexpected. Such discoveries include X-rays, electric current, electron, radioactivity, already revealed when the atom was still considered indivisible, and atomic energy.

However, the last of these was not entirely sudden. Many scientists predicted the possibility of using energy obtained through the transformation of matter, and even associated this energy with atomic reactions. So, from a technical point of view, only the moment of the onset of this event remained unforeseen. Any discoveries, including supposedly accidental ones, are the result of previous investigations that prepare a base for them.

“A false step more than once led to the opening of new roads,” the master of aphorisms Leszek Kumor once said, and America, found by Christopher Columbus on his way to India, is a textbook example. But can this be called an accident?

Imagine the situation: Columbus turns to the country's leadership with a dubious proposal requiring huge financial investments. He is completely unexpectedly assigned a squadron (albeit a small one), and he sails into the endless ocean, and there he suddenly discovers a new continent. Something too unprecedented coincidence of circumstances.

Of course, this event should belong to the section not accidental, but erroneous. Indeed, in the era of great geographical discoveries, travelers sailed into the unknown, not knowing in advance what and where they would find. However, their persistent search for new lands made subsequent finds a natural consequence.

There were many mistakes of this kind in that century. For example, the famous French navigator La Pérouse mistakenly decided that Sakhalin is a peninsula. His opinion was confirmed by none other than Kruzenshtern. And only Nevelskoy's expedition corrected this delusion.
With the advent of aircraft and spacecraft, geography stopped giving researchers a reason for accidental and erroneous discoveries. Which, however, cannot be said about other areas of science that are still able to guard their secrets from annoying pundits. A significant part of unexpected discoveries relates to chemistry and related fields (biochemistry, pharmaceuticals), and many of them relate to previously unknown elements or compounds. Accident? Far from it, because these substances already existed in nature and would inevitably have been identified. The only question was when and by whom it could be done.

Consider, for example, one of the common stories of the discovery of iodine. The French chemist Bernard Courtois had a favorite cat. Once he, frightened of something, inadvertently jumped to the floor and dropped the bottles that were near the laboratory table. In one of them, Courtois prepared a suspension of algae ash in ethanol for the experiment, and in the other there was concentrated sulfuric acid. The bottles broke and the liquids mixed. Clouds of blue-violet steam began to rise from the floor, which settled on the surrounding objects in the form of tiny black-violet crystals with a metallic sheen and a pungent odor. It was new chemical element- iodine ...

Answer honestly: do you always have a bottle of sulfuric acid on hand? I do not have. That is, the accident of this discovery was only in the fact that the original elements were mixed without the participation of a scientist. However, he carefully considered the results of this unintentional experiment and drew the right conclusions. As Bernard Baruch said, "millions of people saw apples fall, but only Newton asked why." And this readiness of the scientist to ask questions, his desire to study the unknown, as well as the habit of keeping sulfuric acid ready, are not at all accidental!

Even if there is an element of chance in the discovery of new substances or lands, one cannot but admit that all of them were made by researchers who purposefully carried out work in their direction. Numerous re-discoveries are proof of their inevitability.

The following facts are most widely known: most of the 500 laws discovered by Robert Hooke were simultaneously identified by other scientists; Lord Kelvin made 32 discoveries, which were also made by 30 other scientists; many aspects of the theory of relativity were developed simultaneously with Albert Einstein by André Poincaré.

Of particular interest are discoveries made almost at the same time by several scientists, often literally hours apart. So, the theory of natural selection was presented on July 1, 1858 in the Linnean Society by two researchers at once - Darwin and Wallace. True, Darwin developed the theory of the evolution of species for 20 years, while Wallace took one week. Alexander Chizhevsky came to the conclusion about the coincidence of social crises with the maximums of solar activity simultaneously with the ethnographer Vasily Anuchin, who described this fact in the book "Social Law".

This is how the periodic table of the elements was created. Everyone knows that Dmitry Mendeleev saw her in a dream. But not everyone has heard that before him attempts to systematize elements were undertaken by Johann Debereiner, Leopold Gmelin, Max von Pettenkofer, Jean Dumas, Adolph Strecker, William Odling, Alexander de Chancourtois, John Newlands and Julius Lothar Meyer.

Unexpected joy.

BRANDY.
In the Middle Ages, merchant seafarers often evaporated water from transported
wine - so that it does not deteriorate on the road and take up less space. Soon, someone resourceful decided to dispense with the recovery phase of the water extracted during the distillation. He suddenly discovered that the taste of fortified wine is great, and its effect is much stronger. This is how brandy appeared, which is now so popular all over the world.

POTATO CHIPS
Everyone's favorite crispy potato was born as a sign of protest. One of the clients of the chef George Krum constantly complained that the potatoes were cut too thick and not fried properly. When the cook got tired of listening to the complaints, he cut it into slices almost as thick as a sheet of paper and fried in a huge amount of oil. Krum did not even suspect that his "revenge" would be so tasty and henceforth he would only have to cook potatoes for a fastidious client.

X-RAYS
Many scientists were interested in the rays that appear as a result of the impact of electrons on a metal target. In 1895, the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen exposed various objects to this radiation and. changing them, by chance I saw how the projection of the bones of his own hand was reflected on the wall. This is how X-rays were discovered that can "shine through" the human body.

BUNS with raisins
This story refers to legends rather than reliable facts, but nevertheless deserves attention. Once Governor-General Arseny Zakrevsky. having bought a fresh sausage, I saw in it ... a cockroach. The baker Ivan Filippov, summoned to the carpet, grabbed the insect and ate it in front of the astonished audience, saying that the general was mistaken - it was a highlight. Back at the bakery. Filippov ordered to urgently start baking buns with raisins, he did not even suspect that they would be in such demand.

PENICILLIN
Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming in 1928 studied the struggle of the human body with influenza. Having grown a culture of staphylococci in 3 Petri dishes, he found that the dishes were poorly washed and mold settled in them. Fleming was upset, but, looking more closely, he noticed that staphylococci had died around the mold spots. After some time, he isolated the penicillin molecule, the world's first antibiotic, from the mold.

MICROWAVES
If engineer Percy Gunser did not like chocolate, the whole world would probably still use pots and pans to heat food. Microwave emitters were installed on Allied radars during World War II. Working near one of the radars. Spencer at some point discovered that the emitter had melted a chocolate bar in his pocket. He was a little upset, but at the same time seriously thought, and then created a microwave that is indispensable in every home.

LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide initially interested scientists exclusively as an aid in childbirth. However, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann decided to test the new drug on himself. The scientist christened April 19, 1943 the Day of the Bicycle, since under the influence of "acid" he made an unforgettable ride on this transport, and from that day he devoted his life to studying the effects of LSD on the psyche and consciousness.

VIAGRA
Who would have thought that the famous Viagra appeared thanks to research on the invention of a remedy for angina. Men all over the world, and women too, can thank the inhabitants of the Welsh city of Merthyr Tydefill. It was here in 1992 that male patients refused to return the experimental tablets after testing ended. Pfizer executives paid due attention to this turn of events - and soon a new drug was introduced.

Sooner or later?

The fact that any discovery has a definite base makes it possible, by analyzing the predecessors, to make an assumption about future achievements. These predicted finds include the planet Pluto, whose existence a quarter of a century before had been proved by calculation by astronomer Percival Lovell. The recent discovery of Uranus satellites was predicted by Soviet astronomers Nikolai Garkavy and Alexei Fridman. Mendeleev predetermined the discovery of eka-aluminum (Ga), ekabor (Sc) and ekasilicon (Ge), as well as analogues of manganese, tellurium, iodine, cesium, barium and tantalum. The existence of inert gases was predicted by William Ramsay. Radio waves were identified by Hertz based on Maxwell's assumption of their existence.

Today, many scientists predict the imminent discovery of one or even several planets. Solar system as well as habitable or habitable planets in other star systems.

However, the history of science knows many cases when scientists simply ignored a certain fact, because it was in deep contradiction with traditional ideas or could not be used in applied research and applied in technology. Such discoveries are called premature, and later, when people's consciousness is ready for new knowledge, they radically change the prevailing worldview and become the basis for a more accurate understanding of reality. Some of the more famous are:

♦ The heliocentric system was proposed at the beginning of the 3rd century. BC e. Aristarchus of Samos, but then forgotten until the discovery of Nicolaus Copernicus.

♦ Back in the 17th century. it was known that the weight of certain substances increases when fired, and the French chemist Leferb suggested that the reason for this was the attachment of some "universal spirit." However, this hypothesis was not developed due to the dominance of the phlogiston theory. The fact that the weight of a number of bodies increased during firing was rediscovered in the second half of the 18th century. and played a huge role in the creation of the oxygen theory of combustion, which destroyed the phlogiston theory.

♦ Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. revealed the laws of inheritance of traits and connected them with the combinatorial theory of hereditary factors, or genes. But only in the early 1950s. Barbara McClintock discovered mobile elements that can move along chromosomes, for which she received the Nobel Prize.

♦ The conjecture about the force of gravity acting between all bodies in the Universe was put forward by Francis Bacon about a century before Isaac Newton.

♦ The famous botanist Robert Brown discovered the random movement of pollen in water, but thought that he was dealing with some living creatures. And only 100 years later, physicist Jean Perrin was able to interpret this as the movement of atoms.

Such a delay in the recognition of some outstanding achievements is a natural phenomenon in the history of science. This is rooted in the social and psychological characteristics of people, most of whom are not ready to quickly and adequately respond to revolutionary changes. After all, “nothing distracts scientists like a premature discovery,” Jean Rostand subtly noted.

THE CREATION OF HUMAN HANDS

Speaking about discoveries, one should not forget about the other side of the coin - inventions. After all, the former only only let the world know about the existence of phenomena or processes, while the latter are hand-made works created exclusively thanks to the efforts and imagination of the person himself. However, here we are faced with the same tendencies.

In 1844, Charles Goodyear discovered a recipe for making a material that does not soften in the heat and does not become brittle in the cold. Before that, he had tried unsuccessfully for many years to improve the quality of rubber until he accidentally heated a mixture of it with sulfur on a kitchen stove. The invention of rubber made the modern automobile possible. Naturally, it cannot be called accidental, because Goodyear has been mixing rubber with different substances... It's just that he was more fortunate this time. This is a typical example of the application of the trial and error method, which one day deservedly rewarded a researcher for many years of efforts.

It would seem that there can be no completely unintentional inventions. But, nevertheless, there is an element of chance here. Although, like discoveries, such inventions are rather not accidental, but erroneous. For example, the chocolate chip cookie came about when innkeeper Ruth Wakefield decided to bake a butter cookie. The woman broke a chocolate bar and mixed the pieces of chocolate with the dough, hoping that the chocolate would melt and give the dough a brown and chocolatey flavor. However, her ignorance of the laws of physics let her down, and from the oven she took out biscuits with pieces of chocolate.

Sticky notes are the result of an unsuccessful experiment to improve the durability of the glue. An employee of the ZM research laboratory tried to improve the quality of the adhesive tape (scotch tape). However, he received a not very durable glue that did not absorb into the glued surfaces. Four years later, a colleague, annoyed that the bookmarks in the book fell out, remembered glue that could secure them without damaging the pages of the book. This is how stickers, irreplaceable in any office, were invented. It is clearly seen that all the listed inventions were only a "side effect" of purposefully carried out work.

Along with unexpected inventions, most of which are of an applied nature, there were also those, the appearance of which was eagerly awaited in many countries of the world. And then repeated, and sometimes simultaneous, were born. Few people know that about 30 steamboats were built and used in England and the United States by the time Robert Fulton patented his Claremont.

And here are the most famous and dramatic cases of simultaneous inventions:

♦ Alexander Graham Bell submitted a patent application for the telephone two hours before Elisha Gray, which robbed him of both the fame and the reward for many years of painstaking work on the device.
♦ Radio was invented almost simultaneously by Popov and Marconi.
♦ The telescope was constructed almost simultaneously in Holland at the beginning of the 17th century. Lippersgey, Metzius and Jansen.

At the same time, those who deny the inevitability of inventions note that many of them, although they perform the same functions, do not differ in special similarities. In my opinion, this fact only confirms the principle of lawfulness of inventions, as it proves that scientists did not "copy" from each other, but carried out work completely apart from their colleagues.

RACE WITH FANTASY

in the field of solar energy were simply suppressed by representatives of large oil concerns. Perhaps the age of environmentally friendly energy will come to the planet only after the last drop of black gold is sold.

Despite these negative moments, practice shows that any phenomenon existing in nature will sooner or later be discovered, and an invention, especially if it is based on any discovery or has serious developments in the past, will certainly come true. Thus, there is no doubt that inventive creativity develops in accordance with certain laws. This gives hope that more efficient mechanisms for predicting new inventions can be created in the future. One of the methods of such a forecast is the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), created in the USSR, but developed in the industrially developed countries of the West and East.

Creative natures - science fiction writers - provide food for thought to engineers and inventors. Like impatient drivers, they constantly pose new challenges to scientists. For example, Jules Berne in the century before last described a journey in a submarine in color, H.G. Wells in 1914 published the story "The World Liberated", in which he told about the use of atomic weapons, and Ray Bradbury talked about travel into the past in a time machine. Modern science fiction writers are not lagging behind either - they tell about spatial and temporal portals and about regeneration chambers, in which a whole organism can be recreated from one living cell. As soon as scientists proudly present to the world another realized fantasy of artists, the following goals are immediately set for them.

But sometimes new devices outstrip the needs of modern society. The so-called premature inventions are interesting in that their creators anticipated the emergence of this need in the future. The most famous examples are:

♦ Leonardo da Vinci: helicopter, gun carriage, rifled firearms, rolling and drawing mills, centrifugal pump, hydraulic press and parachute.
♦ Kulibin: lantern with a mirror reflector (prototype spotlight), elevator
and a flexible leg prosthesis.
Of course, there is also a directly opposite situation, when inventions are late, that is, there are all the prerequisites for creating a new device, and scientists cannot figure out exactly how to design it for them. Here are a couple of such examples:
♦ The first laser only started working
in 1960, although theoretically they could have been created immediately after the appearance of Einstein's work on the quantum theory of induced radiation (1916).

♦ Telescopes were used as early as the 13th century, but it took another four centuries to use four pairs of glasses instead of one pair and thus create a telescope.

Unfortunately, the history of discoveries and inventions has its own dark periods... Too often, artificial barriers have been created before scientific advances. For centuries, the church has been a brake on progress. The most famous examples of the pursuit of innovation for ideological reasons in the XX century. there are persecutions of geneticists ("the reactionary doctrine of the priest Mendel") and cybernetics ("the corrupt girl" of imperialism) in the USSR, which led to a catastrophic lag in these areas. Well, nowadays financial censorship is becoming more and more clear. For example, there are cases when research in the field of solar energy was simply suppressed by representatives of large oil concerns. Perhaps the age of environmentally friendly energy will come to the planet only after the last drop of black gold is sold.

This gives hope that more efficient mechanisms for predicting new inventions can be created in the future. One of the methods of such a forecast is the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), created in the USSR, but developed in the industrially developed countries of the West and East.

Disсovery magazine July 2009

History shows that some scientific discoveries, including those that turned the world upside down, were made entirely by accident. Suffice it to recall Archimedes, who, having sunk into the bath, discovered the law, later named after him, about bodies submerged in water and the force pushing them out, or Newton, on whom the famous apple fell. And, finally, Mendeleev, who saw his table of elements in a dream. Perhaps something here is an exaggeration, but there are very specific examples showing that in science, much depends on the case. Wired magazine has collected some of them.

1. Viagra.

3. X-ray.

In the 19th century, many scientists were interested in the rays that appear as a result of the impact of electrons on a metal target. However, X-rays were discovered by the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895. He exposed various objects to this radiation and, changing them, accidentally saw how the projection of the bones of his own hand appeared on the wall.

4. Penicillin.

Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming studied influenza in 1928. One day he noticed how a blue-green mold (natural penicillin is secreted by mold fungi), multiplying in one of the Petri dishes, killed all the staphylococci located there.

5. Artificial sweeteners.
The three most common sugar substitutes were discovered only because scientists forgot to wash their hands. Cyclamate (1937) and aspartame (1965) were a byproduct of medical research, and saccharin (1879) was accidentally discovered in studies of coal tar derivatives.

6. Microwaves.
Microwave emitters (magnetrons) operated on Allied radars during World War II. New applications were discovered in 1946, when a magnetron melted a chocolate bar in the pocket of Percy Spencer, one of the engineers at the American company Raytheon.

7. Brandy.
In the Middle Ages, wine merchants often evaporated the water from the transported drink so that it did not spoil and take up less space. Soon, someone resourceful decided to skip the recovery phase. Brandy was born.

8. Vulcanized rubber.
Uncured rubber is very fragile and smells bad. Charles Goodyear, after whom Goodyear was named, discovered the vulcanization process when he accidentally placed a mixture of rubber and sulfur on a hot plate.

9. Potato chips.
Chef George Crum invented the popular snack in 1853. When one of his clients complained that his potatoes were cut too thick, he took the potatoes, cut them into pieces almost as thick as a sheet of paper, and fried them. Thus the chips were born.

10. Raisin buns.
It is also worth mentioning here the legend described by the Moscow expert journalist and writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky, that the famous baker Ivan Filippov invented the raisin bun. Governor-General Arseny Zakrevsky, who once bought a fresh cod, suddenly found a cockroach in it. Summoned to the carpet Filippov, grabbed the insect and ate it, saying that the general was mistaken - it was a highlight. Returning to the bakery, Filippov ordered to urgently start baking buns with raisins in order to justify himself before the governor.

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