16 accidental inventions that changed the world

Inventor: Joseph McVicker, head of a Kutol Products Company, a soap manufacturer in Cincinnati, Ohio

What he was trying to make: In the early 1950s, Kutol created a doughy clay to remove soot in coal-burning homes. But as the Christian Science Monitor reports, people soon switched from coal to gas to warm their homes, and company was headed toward bankruptcy.

How it was created: McVicker learned that his schoolteacher sister was using the "dough" as a modeling clay in her classes. Eureka! It was a toy, not a cleaning product. By 1957, colored Play-Doh was sold at Macy's and hawked on kids' TV shows — turning its creators into millionaires.

Inventor: Frank Epperson, an 11-year-old

What he was trying to make: In 1905, Epperson was chilling out on the back porch of his family home in San Francisco. In a very fortunate case of playing with food, Epperson was stirring powdered soda and water in a cup with a stick. He went inside for the night, but left the cup.

How it was created: The next morning, as Gizmodo writes, Epperson discovered a "sweet icicle on a stick." He named his invention after himself: the Eppsicle! He made them for his friends, and later his kids, who called it Pop's-icicle, or Popsicle. In 1923, he applied for a patent and the Popsicle was properly born — saving overheated Americans for many summers to come.

Inventor: Richard Jones, a naval engineer

What he was trying to make: In 1943, Jones was trying to design a meter to monitor power on battleships.

How it was created: Jones was working with tension springs when one of them fell to the ground. The spring kept bouncing from place to place after it hit the floor — the Slinky was born.

Inventor: John Pemberton, a pharmacist

What he was trying to make: Living in Atlanta in the 1880s, Pemberton sold a syrup made of wine and coca extract he called "Pemberton's French Wine Coca," which was touted as a cure for headaches and nervous disorders.

How it was created: In 1885, Atlanta banned the sale of alcohol, so Pemberton created a purely coca-based version of the syrup that could be mixed with carbonated water and drank as a soda. The result was a perfect beverage for the temperance era — a "brain tonic" called Coca-Cola.

Inventor: Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn

What she was trying to make: Wakefield just wanted to make some chocolate cookies.

How it was created: While mixing a batch of cookies in 1930, Wakefield discovered she was out of baker's chocolate. As a substitute, she broke sweetened chocolate into small pieces and added them to the cookie dough. She expected the chocolate to melt, making chocolate cookies, but the little bits remained intact.

Inventor: George Crum, a chef at the Carey Moon Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York

What he was trying to make: Crum was trying to serve a customer French fries in the summer of 1853.

How it was created: A diner kept sending his French fries back, asking them to be thinner and crispier. Crum lost his temper, sliced the potatoes insanely thin and fried them until they were hard as a rock. To the chef's surprise, the customer loved them.

Inventor: John Hopps, an electrical engineer

What he was trying to make: Hopps was conducting research on hypothermia and was trying to use radio frequency heating to restore body temperature.

How it was created: During his experiment he realized if a heart stopped beating due to cooling, it could be started again by artificial stimulation. This realization led to the pacemaker in 1951.

Inventor: James Wright, an engineer at General Electric

What he was trying to make: During World War II, the US government needed rubber for airplane tires, boots for soldiers, and the like. Wright was trying to make a rubber substitute out of silicon, since it was a widely available material.

How it was created: During a test on silicon oil in 1943, Wright added boric acid to the substance. The result was a gooey, bouncy mess. While he couldn't find a practical application, the impracticality of Silly Putty is what makes it awesome.

Inventor: Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation

What he was trying to make: In 1946, Spencer was conducting a radar-related research project with a new vacuum tube.

How it was created: While experimenting with the tube, a candy bar in Spencer's pocket started to melt. Already a holder of 120 patents, Spencer grabbed some unpopped popcorn kernels and held them by the device.

Sure enough, they started to pop. Spencer knew he had a revolutionary device — and an enabler for lazy cooks everywhere.

Inventor: Albert Hofmann, a chemist

What he was trying to make: He was researching lysergic acid derivatives in a laboratory in Basel, Switzerland, in 1938.

How it was created: Hofmann unintentionally swallowed a small amount of LSD while researching its properties. He subsequently had the first acid trip in history, marking the entry of a drug that would become a staple of undercurrent culture, most signified by the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

The psychedelic has had its mark on tech, too: Steve Jobs said that taking LSD was "one of the two or three most important things" he had done in his life.

Inventor: Constantine Fahlberg, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University

What he was trying to make: Fahlberg was trying to find a new use for coal tar back in 1879.

How it was created: Home from a long day at the lab, Fahlberg noticed that his wife's biscuits were way sweeter than usual. The secret ingredient turned out to be the chemical that would eventually be known as saccharine. It had been on Fahlberg's hands when he picked up a biscuit after the lab work. The researcher immediately requested a patent and mass produced his product.

Inventor: Spencer Silver and Art Fry, researchers in 3M Laboratories

What he was trying to make: In 1968, Silver made a "low-tack" adhesive at 3M, but he couldn't find a use for it.

How it was created: Silver's adhesive was remarkable for the fact that you could stick something light to it — like a piece of paper — and pull it off without damaging either surface. What's more, the adhesive could be used again and again. He tried to find a marketable use for the product for 3M for years, to seemingly no avail.

Years later, his colleague Fry found himself frustrated when he couldn't find a way to stick papers into his book of hymns at the church choir. And like that, the idea for the Post-it was born — though it wasn't until 1980 that it was launched nationwide.

Inventor: Patsy Sherman, a chemist for 3M

What she was trying to make: In 1953, Sherman was assigned to work on a project to develop a rubber material that would not deteriorate from exposure to jet aircraft fuels.

How it was created: An assistant accidentally dropped the mixture Sherman was experimenting with on her shoe. While the rest of her shoe became dirty and stained, one spot remained bright and clean. She retraced her steps and identified the stain resistant compound, known today as Scotchguard.

Inventor: John and Will Kellogg, brothers and breakfast entrepreneurs

What they were trying to make: The brothers were trying to boil grain to make granola.

How it was created: In 1898, the brothers accidentally left a pot of boiled grain on the stove for several days. The mixture turned moldy but the product that emerged was dry and thick. After a few experiments, they got rid of the mold — and created Corn Flakes.

Inventor: Sir Alexander Fleming, a scientist

What he was trying to make: Ironically, Fleming was searching for a "wonder drug" that could cure diseases. However, it wasn't until Fleming threw away his experiments that he found what he was looking for.

How it was created: One day in 1928, Fleming noticed that a contaminated Petri dish he had discarded contained a mold that was dissolving all the bacteria around it. When he grew the mold by itself, he learned that it contained a powerful antibiotic — penicillin — that could be used to treat ailments ranging from syphilis to tonsillitis. Thanks to penicillin and other antibiotics, the rate of death due to infectious disease is now one-twentieth of what it was in 1900.

Inventor: Wilhelm Röntgen, a physicist

What he was trying to make: Röntgen was experimenting with cathode-ray tubes when he realized that radiation was piercing through the black cardboard covering the tube, causing a chemical sitting a few feet away to glow.

How it was created: Follow-up tests revealed he had produced an unknown radiation, which he called "X-radiation" and later shortened to "X-ray," that could penetrate most materials, including skin.