Accidental Discoveries - From Laughing Gas To Dynamite

ACCIDENTAL
DISCOVERIES
From Laughing Gas to Dynamite

- Revised & Expanded Edition
LARRY VERSTRAETE
Suite 300 - 990 Fort St
Victoria, BC, V8V 3K2
Canada
www.friesenpress.com
Copyright © 2016 by Larry Verstraete

Revised Edition — 2016
Revised and Expanded Edition Previously published by Scholastic Canada Ltd.under the
titles: Accidental Discoveries: From Laughing Gas to Dynamite & The Serendipity Effect
Copyright 1989, 1999, 2015 by Larry Verstraete
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information browsing,
storage, or retrieval system, without permission in writing from FriesenPress.
ISBN
978-1-4602-7721-8 (Paperback)
978-1-4602-7722-5 (eBook)
1. Science, Experiments & Projects
Distributed to the trade by The Ingram Book Company

Dedicated, as always, to my family - with love
And to the memory of my parents, George and Paula

TA B LE O F CONTENTS
vii O t h e r Bo o k s by L a rry Vers traete
i x Au th o r ’s No te
x i I n t roduc t io n
1 C h a pter 1
Aha
M om en ts
27 C h a pter 2
Fo r t un a te
F u m b l es
51 C h a pter 3
O p p ortu n i ty Kn oc k s
73 C h a pter 4
E x p e r i men ta l
Twi s t s
99 C h a pter 5
C l e ver
Con n ec ti on s
1 23 C h a pter 6
S u r p ri s e
E n d i ng s
1 43 G l o ss a ry
147 Fo r F urt her Re a ding

O TH ER B O O KS BY
LA RRY VERSTRA E TE
“Dinosaurs” of the Deep: Discover Prehistoric Marine Life,

Turnstone Press
Missing in Paradise, Rebelight Publishing Inc.
Life or Death: Surviving the Impossible, Scholastic Canada
Surviving the Hindenburg, Sleeping Bear Press
Case Files: 40 Murders and Mysteries Solved by Science,
Scholastic Canada
S is for Scientists: A Discovery Alphabet, Sleeping Bear Press
At the Edge: Daring Acts in Desperate Times,
Scholastic Canada
G is for Golden Boy: A Manitoba Alphabet, Sleeping
Bear Press
Lost Treasures: 25 True Stories of Discovery,
Scholastic Canada
Survivors: True Death-Defying Escapes, Scholastic Canada
Extreme Science: Science in the Danger Zone
Scholastic Canada
Whose Bright Idea Was It?: True Stories of Invention,
Scholastic Canada
Mysteries of Time, Scholastic Canada
A UTH O R S NO TE
The concept for this book, like much of its content, stemmed
from unexpected circumstances. Years ago, as a newbie writer
learning the trade, I signed up for a correspondence writing
course in children’s literature. The first few assignments
involved writing fiction, but the fourth required something
different. “Write a non-fiction article for a children’s maga-
zine,” the instructions said. With a background in science and
a teaching career already in full swing, I dipped into a com-
fortable subject and selected ‘lightning’, a topic I felt would
captivate young readers.
In my research for the article, the name Benjamin Franklin
surfaced. So did the famous and familiar story of his danger-
ous kite-in-a-lightning-storm experiment. Then, as I dug
deeper into my research material, I encountered another
story about Franklin, one that occurred two years before the
kite experiment. It involved a holiday party, a turkey destined
for electrocution, a colossal accident on Franklin’s part, and
a discovery that altered the course of history. Right then, I
realized that I’d discovered writer’s gold – a story so odd and
fascinating that, properly told, it practically guaranteed the
reader’s attention. I abandoned my earlier subject and wrote
about Franklin and the turkey instead.
xi
With my science background, I knew there were other
science stories with similar mixes where mishaps, mistakes,
and unusual circumstances ultimately led to major break-
throughs. As I worked on other course assignments, I wrote
about these, too. By the end of the course, I had a sizeable
collection - enough for a decent book.
In 1989, Scholastic Canada published the manuscript
under the title The Serendipity Effect. Several years later, it was
revised and reissued under a new title: Accidental Discoveries:
From Laughing Gas to Dynamite.
Since that time, the Internet has broadened the scope
and accuracy of research, and fortunately modern science
still benefits from fruitful blunders and twists of fate. This
expanded and updated edition of Accidental Discoveries
contains more than 80 stories. Many are new. Others like
Benjamin Franklin’s turkey are timeless favorites. Together,
the stories show that in the hands of someone insightful and
curious even minor disasters can have silver linings.
Enjoy!
xii Larry Verstraete

INTRO D UCTION
What triggers the brainstorm that leads to a scientific dis-

covery? What stirs an inventor to create something new or to
see possibilities never seen before?
Ideas surface in the strangest ways, often when they are
least expected. Sometimes they seem to pop up almost
by accident.
The story of an unusual discovery in a Kodak research
laboratory is a good example.
In 1951, a group of Kodak chemists tried to find a tough,
clear, heat-resistant plastic to use in jet plane canopies. One of
their tests involved measuring how far light bent as it passed
through the plastic. To make the measurement, they used an
expensive machine called a refractometer.
Usually the refractometer test was simple and quick. The
chemist placed a sample of plastic between two prisms in the
machine, shot a beam of light through the plastic, measured
how far the beam bent, removed the plastic, and went on
to do the next test. One day, however, things did not go as
planned. The plastic stuck to the prisms, wedging them in the
machine. The refractometer was ruined. The chemist sadly
reported the loss to his supervisor, Harry Coover.
At first, Coover was discouraged. No amount of tugging or
prying could separate the prisms. The plastic film had fused
xiii
them together. Then suddenly Coover realized that the loss
of the refractometer was not really such a serious loss after
all. Although the chemists had been searching for a material
to use in jet planes, they had accidentally discovered some-
thing almost as valuable – a substance that bonded materials
so well that they could not be separated. The discovery led to
the development of new types of fast-acting,
powerful adhesives called super glues.
Of course, serious scientists and inven-
tors don’t depend on accidents for
success. But mistakes, mishaps, unusual
coincidences, and strange twists of luck
happen all the time. Occasionally such
surprises can be helpful. Sometimes they
provide new and valuable information, point
out solutions to problems or open the
doors of imagination, making the impos-
sible suddenly seem possible.
Fate has often played a part in science and
invention. In fact, we even have a word to describe it. The
ability to make unexpected discoveries by accident is
called serendipity.
This book is about the errors, accidents, coincidences, and
odd circumstances that have started or changed the discov-
ery process. It is about creative thinking and what it takes
to generate ideas. Above all, it’s about inventions and break-
throughs, old and new, large and small, that are due in some
way to the serendipity effect.
xiv Larry Verstraete

CHAPTER 1
A HA
MOMENTS
1
Have any of these ever happened to you?
• You find a chunk of food that’s been lying

around too long. It’s covered with dis-
gusting mold.
• You fill a basin with water. Then you

put something in it and water sloshes all
over the floor.
• After a hike in the woods, you discover

burrs stuck to your clothes.
• A bookmark falls out of a book you are reading, and you

lose your place.
It’s likely you’ve had at least one of these experiences.

It’s probably just as likely that you’ve never given it a
second thought.
Perhaps you should . . .
In this chapter, each of these perfectly ordinary events

triggered a brainstorm and led to a revolutionary discovery
or new invention. In the hands of someone observant, to
someone curious with lots of questions, everyday experiences
like these can become ‘aha’ moments when flashes of insight
seem to appear out of nowhere.
Accidental Discoveries 3
P y thagoras – Ab out 54 0 B.C .
A BLACKSMITH’S POUNDING
The day was likely warm. Shops were probably busy and
the dusty streets swarmed with sandal-clad people. Without
precise records from the time, all we can do is guess, but 2500
years ago this was a common scene in places like Creton, a
city in southern Italy.
That particular day, one of the people wandering the streets
of Creton was a Greek mathematician named Pythagoras. Out
for a stroll, Pythagoras was not in a rush. When he passed a
blacksmith making horseshoes in the doorway of his shop, he
stopped to watch.
The blacksmith stoked a fire and pulled out a red-hot piece
of iron. Using a hammer, he pounded and shaped it on an
anvil. Each time the blacksmith brought his hammer down, a
loud clang filled the air.
At first, the sounds seemed ordinary enough. But then
Pythagoras’s keen senses noticed something else. Whenever
the blacksmith switched anvils, the sounds changed. The
tones were different. With his curiosity peaked, Pythagoras
pondered the situation as he continued on his way.
At home, he stretched a piece of string between two
wooden pegs on a board. He plucked the string and heard
a musical twang. When he used a longer string, he heard a
lower, deeper twang.
4 Larry Verstraete
By changing the lengths of strings, Pythagoras made an
interesting discovery. The longer the string, the lower the
tone. The shorter the string, the higher the tone.
Even more curious now, Pythagoras began a series of
investigations. He chose a string and tied it tight to the board.
Next to it he tied another string twice its length. When he
plucked both strings together, Pythagoras found that they
produced a pleasing combination of notes. Because one string
was exactly twice as long as the other, their mathematical
ratio was 2 to 1.
When Pythagoras used a string that was 1½ times as long
as the first, he produced another pleasing combination of
notes. This time, the ratio of lengths was 3 to 2.
Over and over, Pythagoras changed the lengths of strings
and compared the musical notes he made. He found that the
most harmonious or pleasant sounds were made when the
lengths were in small ratios to each other – 2 to 1, 3 to 2, 4 to
3. When he tried more complicated ratios – 19 to 9, or 23 to
13 – the sound combinations were less pleasant.
Pythagoras discovered that there is a predictable numeri-
cal pattern to the most pleasing musical sounds. By applying
their mathematical ratios, he could compose a whole range of
harmonious notes.
Since then, the connections between music and math-
ematics have been studied further, but the numerical values
Pythagoras discovered still apply. Nowadays all musical
instruments – string, wind, and bass – rely on simple musical
ratios like those discovered by Pythagoras many centu-
ries ago.
Archimedes – Ab out 250 B.C .
AN OVERFILLED BATH
Over two thousand years ago, the most feared force on earth
was the powerful Roman army. Yet when the mighty Roman
troops set out to crush the Greek city of Syracuse, they were
almost flattened by huge catapults heaving enormous boul-
ders, mechanical cranes that seized and overturned entire
ships, and massive lenses that focused the sun’s rays on enemy
vessels, setting them on fire.
For their time, these war-machines were truly awesome,
but to Archimedes, the inventor of these weapons, they were
mere toys, objects for his amusement. Today Archimedes is
remembered more for a scientific discovery and the strange
story behind it than for his clever machines.
By all accounts, Archimedes was a deep thinker. Often
hours flew by as he considered a problem. Then he would
suddenly announce a solution as though the answer had just
popped into his head. Perhaps the famous story of the king’s
crown is the best example.
King Hieron II of Syracuse ordered a new crown made out
of solid gold. The finished article was beautiful, but Hieron
was suspicious. Had the goldsmith mixed silver with the gold
and lowered the crown’s value by changing its purity? Hieron
asked Archimedes to find out the truth without damaging
the crown.
Archimedes pondered the problem. Silver is less dense
or compact than gold and therefore weighs less. That much
6 Larry Verstraete
he knew. The obvious thing to do was to weigh the crown
and then weigh an equal amount of pure gold to see if their
weights were the same.
But how could he measure the precise amount of metal
that had gone into the making of the crown? The only sure
method was to melt down the crown and then measure the
volume of the molten liquid. Doing that would destroy the
crown, though, and Archimedes was under strict orders not
to damage it.
Gradually, Archimedes became more and more possessed
by the problem. He lost track of time, forgetting even to eat
or sleep. Then one day he went to the public baths to relax.
As he stepped into the full bath, he noticed that the water rose.
To everyone else, this was just something that happened
every day. But to Archimedes, it was the solution to his
problem. In that instant, he realized that the amount of water
raised or displaced equaled the volume of his
body as he got into the bath.
Archimedes leaped out of the bath
so excited he didn’t even dress.
He raced out of the building and
down the street shouting, “Eureka!
Eureka!” (I have found it!)
At home, Archimedes pushed the king’s
crown into a bowl filled to the top with water. He measured
the amount of liquid that spilled over. From his experience at
the public baths, he knew now that the volume of the water
displaced by the crown would be the same as the volume of
the crown itself.
Next Archimedes measured out an equal volume of pure
gold. Then he checked the weight of the pure gold against
the weight of the crown. Sure enough, the crown was lighter.
The king had indeed been cheated.
The goldsmith was punished, Archimedes was rewarded,
and the world was given a way to establish the relative density
and purity of different materials.
DID YOU KNOW?

Archimedes died much the same way as he lived – deep
in thought. When Syracuse was finally conquered
by Roman troops, a soldier was sent to arrest him.
The soldier found the old man sitting on the floor,
solving mathematical problems. When asked to
surrender, Archimedes refused, saying that he was
too busy with his work. The angry soldier drew
his sword and killed Archimedes on the spot.
8 Larry Verstraete
Galileo Galilei – 1581
THE SWINGING CHANDELIER
It was a typical Sunday in 1581. Hundreds of worshippers
filled the huge cathedral in Pisa, Italy. Most of them listened
intently to the church service.
But not seventeen year-old Galileo Galilei. Instead, Galileo
studied a chandelier hanging overhead. Air currents flowing
through the lofty cathedral moved the chandelier from side to
side, back and forth. Sometimes the chandelier moved gently;
sometimes it swung in a wide arc. No matter what the size
of its swing, it seemed to Galileo that the chandelier kept
steady time.
There were no clocks or watches in those days. To time the
chandelier’s swings, Galileo felt for the pulse in his wrist. He
counted the pulse beats. One, two, three beats for one swing.
One, two, three beats for another.
Galileo was surprised. No matter how wide or narrow the
swing, it always took the same number of pulse beats.
Right after the service, Galileo raced home. He quickly
suspended a weight from a long string to create a pendulum.
Galileo pulled the weight back a short distance, released it,
and timed its swing. He tried it again, this time pulling the
weight back farther before releasing it. After many tries,
Galileo confirmed his suspicions – the time it took to make
one swing was always the same whether the swing was wide
or narrow.
Excited now, Galileo tried other experiments with his
pendulum. He discovered that the length of string, amount
of weight, and other factors all had some predictable relation-
ship to the time of a pendulum’s swing.
Some years later, Galileo experimented with falling objects.
Did all objects fall at the same rate? To find out, he needed to
time objects as they fell. But that posed a problem. How could
he accurately time something that moved so quickly?
Galileo remembered the pendulum. The weight of the pen-
dulum acted just like a falling object – except it didn’t fall
straight down. It fell on a slant and at a slower rate that could
be timed.
Galileo adapted the pendulum as a timepiece.
First he got a wooden board and carved a long,
straight, smooth groove down the center.
When he raised the board slightly at one
end and released a ball, it slowly rolled
down the groove.
Galileo marked off his grooved
board into small divisions of equal
length. For a timing device, he rigged
up a water-filled container with a small
hole in the bottom. By counting water drops, he could keep
track of time. Now he was ready to begin.
He released one ball at a time from the higher end of the
board. As the balls rolled, Galileo timed how long it took
them to cross each division of the board. To his surprise,
Galileo discovered that the balls didn’t travel down the track
at an even rate. Instead, they accelerated – or sped up – as
10 Larry Verstraete

they got farther down the groove. Falling objects, he found,
picked up speed as they fell to the earth.
After more experiments, Galileo was able to work out a
mathematical formula to calculate the acceleration of a falling
object. To prove his point, he even predicted how far a can-
nonball could be blasted from a cannon. Then he fired it to
verify his prediction.
In many ways, the swinging chandelier started a revolution
in the world of science. With his pendulum investigations,
Galileo pioneered the scientific method –the system of care-
fully controlled experiments and observations that modern
scientists use today to prove a natural law beyond a shadow
of a doubt.
Rober t Koch – 188 0
A MOLDY POTATO
Today we know that microorganisms such as bacteria can
cause disease. By controlling the spread of these microorgan-
isms, we can protect ourselves from illness. In the late 1800s,
though, this was a brand new idea and many people didn’t
believe it. How could something too tiny to be seen by the
unaided eye actually cause disease?
Robert Koch, a German doctor, did not believe that the idea
was ridiculous at all. He spent long hours in his laboratory in
Berlin trying to isolate and study bacteria.
One day in 1880, while he was cleaning up his laboratory,
Koch noticed a piece of boiled potato someone had left on the
table. The potato had been lying there a few days and already
it was covered with furry mold.
Koch picked up the potato. As he was about to discard it, he
stopped and looked more closely. Wasn’t this interesting?
Although Robert Koch had seen moldy food before, this
time he noticed something different. Separate patches of mold
covered the potato. Each patch was a different color.
Koch pulled off a bit of gray mold, put it on a glass slide,
added a drop of water, and looked at it under his microscope.
A swarm of identical-looking microorganisms swam across
the slide. Next he examined a red patch. Interesting! A differ-
ent kind of microorganism this time.
Test after test, Koch observed the same thing. Each colored
patch contained clusters of identical-looking microorganisms
12 Larry Verstraete

that were different from the clusters of microorganisms
growing in other colored patches. When Koch plucked micro-
organisms from one patch and placed them on a food source,
they grew and multiplied, forming a colony of microorgan-
isms identical in every way to the original.
Robert Koch’s second glance at a simple potato gave sci-
entists a way to grow and isolate bacteria as well as other
microorganisms for study. It was the beginning of the science
of bacteriology and the end to many diseases.
MORE ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERIES

While researching a new anti-ulcer drug in 1965, James
Schlatter, a chemist, spilled some powder onto his
fingers. When he licked his fingers to pick up a sheet of
paper, he noticed a strong sweet taste. The accident led
to the discovery of aspartame, an artificial sweetener.
Frank Epper son – 19 05
ACCIDENTALLY FROZEN
The first Popsicle went on sale in 1923. But the real story of
the Popsicle started eighteen years earlier with a small boy, a
jar of soda water, a stick, and an unusually cold night.
One day in 1905, eleven year-old Frank Epperson of
California whipped up a popular drink of his time. He added
powdered soda mix to water. By mistake, he left the mixture
on his back porch overnight. That night temperatures
dropped to an all-time low. The next day Frank discovered
that the jar of soda water had frozen with the stirring stick
stuck inside.
Years passed. Frank Epperson forgot about the event. As
an adult, he tried his hand at several businesses, but none of
them was a resounding success. Then, eighteen years after the
actual incident, Epperson remembered the frozen soda water
of his youth. He changed the recipe by adding fruit flavors
in place of the soda water, then poured the brew into a mold,
added a handy wooden carrying stick, and froze the mixture.
Epperson called the first of these frozen treats “Epsicles” for
Epperson’s Icicles. Later the name was changed to Popsicle.
Today two billion Popsicles in over twenty-six flavors are
sold each year. The favorite? The best selling flavor is cherry.
14 Larry Verstraete

DID YOU KNOW?
The name “Popsicle” actually came from Frank
Epperson’s own children. They nicknamed the ice treat
“Pop’s Cycles”. When the Great Depression hit North
America in the 1920s, people couldn’t afford treats
like Popsicles. To combat slipping sales, Epperson
introduced the Twin Popsicle – two popsicles frozen
together in one package. For a nickel, a kid could
buy a double-sized treat and share it with a friend.
Originally Epperson froze each Popsicle separately
in large test tubes, a process which took several
hours. With modern equipment, it now takes
minutes.
More than one sugary treat owes its shape and name to
an accidental discovery:
Lifesavers – The candy’s distinctive hole-in-the-middle
shape came about when Clarence A. Crane, its creator,
hired someone to mass-produce a flat, round candy.
Instead, the machine malfunctioned and punched a hole
in the center. Crane liked the unexpected effect and gave
the candy its well-known name.
Milk Duds – In 1926, when Chicago candy manufacturer
E. Hoffman & Company tried to develop a perfectly
round, chocolate-covered caramel, the machine spit
out lopsided balls instead. The mangled milk chocolate
‘duds’ tasted so great that the company continued
production. The deformed candy was marketed under the
name Milk Duds.
16 Larry Verstraete

Sylvan Goldman – 1936
CHAIRS + WHEELS = ?
If you went grocery shopping before 1937, you needed
a sturdy back and strong arm muscles. As you roamed the
aisles, you piled groceries into baskets and bags that you
lugged around the store with you. Strenuous exercise!
Sylvan N. Goldman of Oklahoma City was in the super-
market business. He figured that there had to be an easier way.
One night in 1936, Goldman sat on a folding chair in his
small office thinking about this problem. How could he make
shopping more convenient and less exhausting? He toyed
with several plans, but none of them was very good. Then, as
he glanced at his chair, he had a whopper of an idea. Later he
said, “Inspiration hit me right between the eyes.”
He placed two folding chairs together and studied them.
If he joined the chairs and added wheels underneath and a
basket on top, Goldman figured that he would have an easy-
to-push cart. Like the chairs, the cart could be folded for con-
venient storage, too. Goldman called his new invention the
“folding basket carrier”.
On June 4, 1937, Goldman’s first batch of shopping carts
stood ready for use in his store. But the day was a disappoint-
ment. Instead of excitedly grabbing carts, customers avoided
the new invention believing that other shoppers would think
they were weak if they used one.
Then Goldman had another great idea. He hired people to
push carts around this store, pretending to be shoppers. It
wasn’t long before real customers copied the phony ones and
followed their example.
Today hundreds of millions of shopping carts roll around
stores taking the strain out of lugging supplies for customers
around the globe.

Cheddar, anyone? According to legend, a wandering Arab
traveling through the desert opened a pouch containing
milk, only to find that the liquid had spoiled in the heat
and had separated into thick clumps. Through a twist of
fate, he had discovered a way to turn milk into cheese.
18 Larry Verstraete

James A . Cro cker – 199 0
SAVING HUBBLE
In the history of colossal mistakes perhaps none was more
costly or embarrassing than the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble was launched into space in April 1990, after forty-
four years of planning and development that cost a cool $1.5
billion. As Hubble orbited Earth, its polished lenses and
mirrors were supposed to transmit crisp images of distant
stars, allowing astronomers to peer into far-away galax-
ies. Instead, the images transmitted by Hubble were fuzzy
and disappointing.
Red-faced engineers at NASA quickly diagnosed the cause.
Hubble’s 2.4 meter (8 ft.) primary mirror had been polished
into the wrong shape. Its outer edges were off roughly 1/50th
the thickness of a human hair – just enough to distort images
sent to Earth.
From Earth, computer processers at the Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore made adjustments to the orbit-
ing telescope. They managed to remove some of Hubble’s
blurriness, but the images were still hazy. While Hubble
circled Earth, engineers looked for ways to further correct
the problem and redeem themselves.
One of the engineers pondering the situation was James
A. Crocker. One night in 1993, while in Munich, Germany,
Crocker stepped into a hotel room shower. “The shower head
was on a bar,” he explained later. “It ran up and down, and
folded up.” In the shower’s simple construction, Crocker saw
a way of saving Hubble.
Back home in Baltimore, Crocker raided his son’s set of
Ramagons, a toy construction set. Using plastic foam and
pieces of Ramagon, he made a model of an oddly shaped device
– a Swiss Army knife–like contraption with folding arms and
twelve corrective mirrors. Crocker figured a full-scale version
of the model just might correct the giant telescope’s fuzziness
if could be installed in the orbiting Hubble’s belly.
Crocker pitched the idea to NASA. The device offered
a glimmer of hope. Built to Hubble dimensions and called
COSTAR (Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial
Replacement), the contraption weighed twice as much as
a fridge.
In the laboratory, COSTAR worked like it should, auto-
matically unfolding its octopus arms upon command. But
would it work in space?
In December 1993, seven astronauts blasted into space
aboard Space Shuttle Endeavor carrying COSTAR, an array
of instruments, and two hundred custom-made tools. The
six man, one woman crew had trained eleven months for the
job. But even John Bahcall, an astrophysicist involved in the
project, had doubts about the mission’s success. “If they bring
the repair mission off, it will be the equivalent of a modern-
day miracle,” he said. “I’ll be there cheering and praying.”
During the eleven-day flight, two teams of astronauts
spacewalked around and through the 13 meter (43 ft.) long
Hubble. Like delicate surgeons, they pulled out instruments to
make room for COSTAR. Then they opened the phone-booth
20 Larry Verstraete

sized container that stored the device. The astronauts lifted
it out, slid it into the empty slot, and screwed it into place
on the telescope. To further correct the situation, they also
installed a Wide Field and Planetary Camera.
The corrective surgery greatly improved Hubble’s perfor-
mance and reliability. From an idea spawned in a hotel room
shower to fully installed device, COSTAR was the miracle
that brought crisp views of distant galaxies back to Earth.
MO RE A H A
MOM ENTS
Friedrich Kekulé (1865)

BENZENE’S MOLECULAR
STRUCTURE
For years, Friedrich Kekulé, a German chemist, struggled
to unlock the secrets of benzene, an organic compound
with unique properties. In chemical reactions, other organic
chemicals combined in predictable ways. But benzene was a
renegade with odd and surprising properties. Its molecular
structure was a mystery.
One evening, Kekulé fell asleep in front of a flickering
fire. He began to dream. In his dream, atoms danced in mid-
air. Some atoms linked up with others to form pairs. Some
of the pairs joined other pairs. Chains of atoms joined other
chains. The chains twisted and turned like snakes. Suddenly
one of the snakes formed a circle, its head chasing its own
tail. The head grabbed the tail, and the snake whirled around
and around.
Kekulé awoke with a start, dazed by the still-fresh dream.
He realized that the dancing snakes were the solution to
the benzene problem. Rather than lining up in chains like
other compounds, benzene’s atoms formed a circle. That was
22 Larry Verstraete

the only way to explain benzene’s peculiar and unpredict-
able ways.
Kekulé’s vivid dream revolutionized chemistry, giving
us new understandings of chemicals and the ways that
they combine.
Richard & B et t y James (1943)

SLINKY
Richard James, an American engineer, was assigned to correct
an instrument problem on a ship when a heavy spring acci-
dentally fell off a high shelf. Instead of crashing to the floor,
the spring uncoiled and then gracefully flipped and slithered
its way down. The accident inspired James and his wife, Betty,
to make a toy out of a coiled-up spring. Called Slinky because
of its unique flopping action, the toy has been a best seller
since first hitting stores in November 1945.
George De M estral (1948)

VELCRO
On a hike through the woods, annoying burrs stuck to
Swiss engineer George de Mestral’s clothing, forcing him
to stop and pry them off. What made them so difficult to
remove? Closer examination showed that the burrs had hook-
like arms that locked into the open weave of his clothing. The
discovery led de Mestral to invent a hook-and-loop fastener
of his own. Today his invention – Velcro – can be found on
everything from clothing and lunch bags to space suits and
spacecraft.
M ar tin Cooper (1973)

CELL PHONE
At a time when telephones were stationary devices, Martin
Cooper caught a glimpse of the future while watching a tele-
vised episode of Star Trek. In the show, Captain James T. Kirk
used a Communicator, a fictional, handheld device the size of
a deck of cards.
Inspired by the show, Cooper, head of Motorola’s com-
munications systems division, assembled a team to develop
a product that worked the same way. Within 90 days, they
had a prototype ready. It was the size of a brick and at 1.1
kilograms (2.5 lb.), just as heavy. To prove its mobile capabili-
ties, Cooper invited journalists to meet him on Sixth Avenue
in New York City. His first call was to Joel Engel, his chief
competitor at AT&T, another communications company.
24 Larry Verstraete

“Joel, this is Marty,” he said brashly. “I’m calling you from
a cell phone, a real handheld portable cell phone.” Then he
handed the phone to some of the reporters so they could make
on-the-spot calls, too.
The stunt created a wave of publicity, but it took years of
further development to miniaturize the device and set up an
infrastructure of transmitting towers that would make the
cell phone the communication wonder that it is today.
Hugh M c Cror y (1995)

HAIR PILLOWS
An otter swimming through an oil slick triggered Phil
McCrory’s brainstorm. McCrory, a hairdresser from
Huntsville, Alabama, was watching a television program
about oil pollution. One scene showed an otter swimming
through the polluted area. McCrory was surprised to see how
much oil collected on the otter’s fur. Would human hair do
the same thing?
As a hairdresser, McCrory had plenty of human hair on
hand to test. His experiments showed that oil stuck to hair
rather well.
In 1995, McCrory patented a pollution-fighting invention
– “hair pillows”. When tossed into an oil slick, the pillows
absorb oil – basically, the oil sticks to the hair. When pillows
are pulled out of the slick, they bring polluting oil along with
them. Once the oil is squeezed out and collected, the pillows
can be reused to clean up more of the mess.

Sunscreens were introduced during World War II to
protect American soldiers who were stationed in the
Pacific from severe exposure to the sun, but it took
years before doctors realized sunscreens could also
be used by sunbathers to prevent sunburn.
26 Larry Verstraete

CHAPTER 2
FORTUNATE
FUMBLES
27
Smashed bottles, jarring jolts of electricity, spilled chemicals,
machines running amuck! Can such accidents ever lead to
great breakthroughs?
Consider the case of the factory worker at the Proctor &
Gamble Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1878, he left for his
lunch break in such a hurry that he forgot to turn off his soap-
making machine, leaving it to churn for a much longer period
that it should. Instead of reporting his error, the man pack-
aged the batch of soap and sent the bars to customers think-
ing that no one would be the wiser. He was wrong. The soap
had an unusual quality. Rather than sinking to the bottom of
the tub, air bubbles trapped in the bar of soap caused it to
float.
Customers loved the new soap since it meant no more

fishing around in a sink or tub for a bar that had sunk to
the bottom. When orders for the new product flooded the
company, Proctor and Gamble discovered the worker’s error
and started mass producing Ivory Soap, “the soap that floats”.
In this chapter, unplanned fumbles like this offer opportu-
nities for breakthroughs that otherwise might be missed.
Pieter Van M uschenbroeck – 1746
A JAR OF ELECTRICTY
Have you ever walked across a carpeted floor and then
touched a doorknob or a friend? The small shock you might
receive is the discharge of static electricity. It is created by
friction. When you walk across a carpet, your body becomes
electrically charged. When you touch a conductor of electric-
ity – a piece of metal for example, or another person – the
charge can transfer to the object.
To produce static electricity hundreds of years ago, it was
popular to use hand-cranked friction machines known as
electrostatic generators. The problem with electrostatic gen-
erators was that they couldn’t store electricity for use later.
Once discharged by a touch, the charge was gone. To produce
another charge, the machine had to be cranked again.
In 1746, a professor at the University of Leyden in Holland
tried to make a device to hold electricity. Professor Pieter van
Muschenbroeck and two assistants thought that they would
be able to capture electrical charges if they surrounded an
electrified object with a non-conductor such as glass.
To try it out, they hooked up an electrostatic generator to
a brass chain that they dangled inside a glass jar. When they
cranked the generator, electricity flowed down the chain to
the jar. But when they touched a conductor to the jar, nothing
happened. The electricity, it seemed, had disappeared.
Disappointed, the professor tried another approach. This
time he filled the jar with water. Once more, he hooked up the
30 Larry Verstraete

chain to the machine and cranked the handle. Nothing. Again
it seemed they had failed.
Discouraged, they began to dismantle the machine. An
assistant held the jar with one hand while the water inside
was still connected to the generator. With his other hand,
he grabbed the wire to remove it from the machine. A jolt
of electricity surged through his body, paralyzing his arms
and legs.
The jar of water had indeed stored electricity, but it took

an accident to prove the point. By touching the wire and the
jar at the same time, the man acted as a shortcut for the elec-
trical charge. After a few hours, he recovered, but the lesson
lived on.
The apparatus became known as a Leyden jar. With it,
strong currents could be stored for a long time, enabling sci-
entists to discover new properties and benefits of electricity.
DID YOU KNOW?
Modern-day electrostatic generators can collect
huge charges. The Van de Graff generator, a device
that uses a conveyor belt to carry an electrical
charge to a hollow ball, can deliver a whopping 5
million volts of electricity.
32 Larry Verstraete

Charles Goodyear – 1839
CHARRED RUBBER
Charles Goodyear’s fascination with rubber started quite by
accident. One day in 1834, Goodyear, an unemployed sales-
man, noticed a rubber life preserver on display in the window
of a New York shop. He examined it carefully and found a
defect in the product. He raced home, designed a new valve
for the preserver to remedy the problem, and a few days later
returned to the shop.
Goodyear was sure the manufacturer would buy his
improved model. He was wrong. The problem with the life
preserver, he was told, was not the valve. It was the rubber.
Despite all its wonderful elastic properties, rubber had draw-
backs, too. In cold weather it became so brittle it shattered
into pieces; in hot weather it became sticky and foul-smelling.
Find a way around those problems, the manufacturer told
Goodyear, and his company would pay a fortune for the secret.
From then on, Charles Goodyear was hooked on rubber.
With the little money he possessed, Goodyear bought big
chunks of the stuff. He shredded it into tiny bits, loaded the
pieces into pans, added chemicals, then stirred and heated the
mixtures over his kitchen stove. He nailed samples of rubber
all around his house to see what effect temperatures had
on them.
For five years, Goodyear devoted himself to his experi-
ments. He grew tired, pale, and sickly. Gradually his house
emptied as, one at a time, he sold his household goods to buy
food and clothing for his family and, of course, more rubber
for his experiments.
Despite all the failures, Goodyear never gave up hope.
Then unexpectedly in 1839, a small accident changed his
life. He was experimenting with a mixture of rubber, sulfur,
and white lead. As he stirred the batch, a bit of it splashed
onto the hot stove. Instead of melting as Goodyear expected,
it sizzled and charred around the edges. Curious about this
strange reaction, Goodyear dropped another glob onto the
stove. This time he noticed a thin rim of rubber between
the charred edge and the rest of the material. The rim was
flexible and moldable like rubber, but it didn’t become brittle
when cold or sticky when warm. Goodyear named his discov-
ery “vulcanized rubber” after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
Although Goodyear had stumbled upon the right combi-
nation of chemicals to make vulcanized rubber, a question
remained. How much heat was necessary? For the next
five years, Goodyear experimented constantly in the family
kitchen, trying to find the answer. His health worsened and
his family became poorer as he struggled to finance his work.
Perhaps the ridicule Goodyear endured was worse than
poor health and poverty. No one took him seriously. After all,
he had failed repeatedly before. Now people laughed when he
claimed that heat – the thing that made rubber sticky – was
also necessary to cure its stickiness.
Finally, after ten years of struggle and misfortune,
Goodyear discovered a winning formula. Pressurized steam
applied for four to six hours at temperatures around 130°C
(270°F) stabilized the mixture.
34 Larry Verstraete

In 1844, Goodyear received a patent for his process, but
even then he did not gain the wealth or respect he deserved.
Other people claimed that they had invented vulcanized
rubber first.
Goodyear continued to experiment on his own, developing
many new uses for rubber. He sold his secrets to manufac-
turers. While they reaped huge profits, Charles Goodyear
remained poor most of his life. When he died in
1860, he was $200,000 in debt.
Horace Wells – 184 4
JUST ONE WHIFF
The hall in Hartford, Connecticut, was packed to overflowing.
In the audience sat two friends – Samuel Cooley and Horace
Wells, a dentist. Both young men were in for a surprise.
Cooley didn’t suspect that he was about to be the main source
of entertainment. Wells didn’t realize that he was about to
change medical history.
When the speaker called for volunteers to participate in
an experiment, Cooley strutted to the front of the audience.
Would he sniff a little gas from a container to demonstrate its
effects to the others? Not one to back down from a challenge,
Cooley agreed.
The gas was nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide had recently
been discovered, and its unusual effects were a source of fun
at gatherings like this. A good sniff of the gas usually turned
unsuspecting subjects into giggling, laughing fools, much to
the amusement of those in the audience. The effect led many
to call nitrous oxide by another name – laughing gas.
Cooley inhaled deeply and broke into hysterical laughter.
Then, as sometimes happened with nitrous oxide, Cooley’s
mood changed. He became violent. He scuffled with others
and tried to pick fights with them. He tripped, fell heavily,
and struggled to get up again. Momentarily stunned, he wan-
dered back to his seat beside Wells.
Other volunteers were called forward and the demonstra-
tion continued. Someone glanced back at Cooley and noticed
36 Larry Verstraete

a pool of blood under his seat. The fall had gashed Cooley’s
leg and he was bleeding profusely. When informed of the
injury, Cooley was surprised. He’d felt no pain at all.
Being a dentist, Wells realized the importance of this event.
If nitrous oxide dulled a person’s senses, perhaps it would kill
pain during surgery. Wells wasted no time trying to prove his
theory. A decaying molar caused him pain, so he gathered a
few witnesses and asked a colleague to remove it. Before the
dentist went to work, Wells inhaled nitrous oxide and quickly
lost consciousness. While he was out, his friend extracted the
tooth. Just as he predicted, Wells felt no pain at all.
Encouraged by his own experience, Wells arranged a
bigger demonstration, this time in front of doctors and den-
tists at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He
gave a willing patient a dose of nitrous oxide, then began
removing one of the patient’s teeth. To Wells’ surprise, the
patient screamed and howled in pain. In his nervousness,
Wells had started the procedure before the gas had taken
hold. The spectators booed and
hissed, forcing Wells to leave in dis-
grace, his reputation ruined.
Wells soon gave up his dental
practice, but his demonstrations
aroused the interest of others who
continued to experiment with nitrous
oxide and other painkillers. Today,
thanks to Wells and these medical pio-
neers going to the dentist is no longer
the painful experience it once was.
Alf red Nobel – 1875
SPILLED LIQUID
Alfred Nobel had a personal interest in explosives. In 1864,
his younger brother, Emil, had been killed in a tragic acci-
dent with nitroglycerine at the family explosives factory
in Sweden.
In those days, nitroglycerine was widely used for blasting
rocks in mines and quarries. But this highly unstable liquid
often exploded unexpectedly – all it took was a slight jiggle
of its container.
Impacted by his brother’s death, Alfred Nobel looked for
safer ways to use nitroglycerine. He found that if nitroglycer-
ine was mixed with a porous white powder called kieselguhr, it
could be rolled into sticks that could be carried safely. He
called his new explosive dynamite.
With Nobel’s discovery, a powerful
explosive force was locked in a conve-
nient, safe form that could be used in
all areas of construction, from build-
ing roads to blasting tunnels. Driven
by his success, Alfred Nobel opened
up dynamite factories across Europe
and became a wealthy man.
Always on the lookout for ways to
improve the product, Nobel continued
his research. One day in 1875, while
experimenting with nitroglycerine,
38 Larry Verstraete

Nobel accidentally cut his finger. Quickly he reached for a
bottle of collodion and dabbed some on his finger. Collodion –
a thick, sticky liquid – was often used on cuts because it dried
quickly to form an elastic “skin” that sealed the wound.
As Nobel continued to work with nitroglycerine, a little of
it dropped on the collodion. The collodion changed appear-
ance. A gummy new substance formed.
Acting on a hunch, Nobel tried other experiments with
collodion. He found that by heating mixtures of nitroglyc-
erine with finely divided collodion, a transparent, jelly-
like explosive product formed. It was even more powerful
than dynamite.
Alfred Nobel called his discovery blasting gelatin. Because
of his lucky accident, it is often said that “blasting gelatin was
born on a man’s finger and not in a test tube.”
DID YOU KNOW?

Besides dynamite and blasting gelatin, Alfred Nobel held 354
other patents for discoveries and inventions. In 1895, Nobel
wrote his last will, leaving much of his vast wealth to the
establishment of the Nobel Prize. He decreed that his fortune
should be divided into five parts and used for annual prizes
in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature,
and Peace “to those who, during the preceding year, shall
have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind.”
Edouard B enedic tus – 19 03
UNBREAKABLE GLASS
As French chemist Edouard Benedictus climbed a ladder to
retrieve chemicals on a high shelf, his hand slipped, knocking
a glass flask to the floor. The flask ricocheted off the hard
surface, but instead of shattering into shards, it cracked and
kept its original shape.
Fascinated by the odd behavior, Benedictus examined the

flask. A thin film coated the inside. It seemed to be holding
the broken pieces together.
With a little investigating, Benedictus identified the filmy
substance. The flask once contained a solution of collodion.
Over time, the sticky liquid had evaporated, leaving a thin
residue behind.
Benedictus labeled the flask, returned it to the shelf, and
continued with his original research. Weeks later, he read a
40 Larry Verstraete

newspaper story about a young girl who had been badly cut
by flying glass in an automobile accident. He remembered the
non-shattering flask. Could the filmy coating prevent acci-
dents like this?
Benedictus began a new series of experiments. He spread
collodion between sheets of glass and used a press to bond
the sheets together. Tests showed that the glass resisted
shattering. Even when it splintered upon impact, the pieces
stayed together.
Eventually, Edouard Benedictus developed safety glass,
a type of glass that stays together even when smashed with
a hammer. Today we use safety glass in many places – car
windshields, windows and doors of public buildings, even in
goggles for machinists.

In 1863, printer John Wesley Hyatt discovered that a spill
of collodion in a medicine cabinet had hardened into
a thin, clear sheet. Intrigued, he mixed collodion with
sawdust and paper, hoping to produce a hard, durable
substitute for ivory. He ended up with a new product,
celluloid, the first of many plastics.
James W. Christ y – 1978
AN UNEXPLAINED BUMP
In June of 1978, astronomer James Christy followed a famil-
iar routine. He took a recently snapped photographic plate
of the night sky, placed it into a machine called a Star Scan,
and turned it on. Christy had scanned dozens of other photo-
graphs in the same way. At first glance, this one looked no dif-
ferent from the others. The stars were like pinpoints of light.
To no surprise, the dwarf planet Pluto looked like a hazy ball.
But something caught Christy’s attention. There was a
bulge on Pluto. A blurry bump. Pluto looked stretched, elon-
gated. Was there a smudge on the photographic plate? Or
had there been some unexpected movement at the moment
the picture was taken? Whatever the reason, the photograph
appeared defective. Christy decided to scrap it.
Just then the Star Scan machine flickered and died. Christy
called for help. While a technician worked on the machine,
Christy stayed in the room, ready to give assistance if neces-
sary. In the hour it took to complete the repair, Christy idly
studied the ruined photograph. The hazy bump bothered him.
Could there be more to it than he had first thought?
Christy went to the archives, the room where earlier pho-
tographs were stored. He found one marked “Pluto image.
Elongated. Plate no good. Reject.” In this photograph, Pluto
had the same bumpy look. Digging further, Christy found six
other rejected photographs taken between 1965 and 1970.
42 Larry Verstraete

Each one had been discarded for the same reason. Each one
showed the same bulge.
The rejected photographs, it turned
out, were not defective at all. The
curious breakdown of the Star Scan
machine gave Christy a chance to take
a second look, wonder, ask questions,
and make an important discovery. The
blurry bulge turned out to be a moon, the first ever discovered
for Pluto. Christy named it Charon, after his wife, Charlene.
DID YOU KNOW?

The combination of luck and close observation played a role
in other discoveries in astronomy.
In 1932, Karl Jansky, an engineer for Bell Laboratories,
was trying to find sources of noises that interfered
with long-distance radio signals. He rigged up a weird
looking antenna system, mounted it on a junked Model T
Ford, and drove around looking for radio interference.
To his surprise, he detected a persistent hiss coming
from the Milky Way Galaxy. Jansky was the first person
to discover that many bodies in the universe emit radio
signals. Jansky also claimed another first: his rickety
antenna-on-wheels was the world’s first ever radio
telescope.
Frank Et scor n – 1986
LIQUID NAUSEA
At some point on an otherwise ordinary day, behavioral psy-
chologist Frank Etscorn stumbled and tripped. He had been
walking across his laboratory in the basement of the New
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, carrying an
open vial containing a brown liquid.
Etscorn was studying sugar dependency in rats. The liquid
was a nicotine extract, a nausea-inducing substance found in
tobacco that Etscorn planned to use on rats to see if it reduced
their craving for sweets. But that day, Etscom tripped. The
liquid sloshed on to his arm, giving him – not the rats – a
highly concentrated dose of nicotine.
“I wiped it off and didn’t pay attention,” he told a reporter
for People Magazine later. “But after about 15 minutes I
felt nauseated.”
The experience sidetracked Etscorn, steering him into
a new area of research. “I had a great idea,” he said. “This
would be a great way to get nicotine into the skin. Almost
immediately, I also realized this could be a way for people to
stop smoking.”
What Etscorn envisioned was a slap-on patch similar to
the ones already being used to control motion sickness. By
giving the wearer of the patch steadily reduced doses of
nicotine over a long period, Etscorn figured smokers could be
weaned off their addictive habit.
44 Larry Verstraete

Having the idea was one thing. Developing an effective,
reliable, cost-effective patch proved more complicated. For
months, Etscorn, a non-smoker, experimented on himself.
He swabbed different concentrations of nicotine on to his
body and charted their nausea-producing effects. Then
he convinced his brother, John, a long time smoker, to be a
subject, too.
When John visited his brother in 1981, Frank tested liquid
nicotine on him. “I flopped him on our kitchen table and
smeared some of it on the hollow of his neck.” In minutes,
nicotine seeped into John’s body and he felt the results.
By 1986, Frank Etscorn had a workable product and a
patent to protect it. Called Harbitol, it was the first nicotine
patch of its kind.
MO RE FO RTUNA TE
FUM B LES
B er thold Schwar t z (ab out 1350)

GUNPOWDER
Some say the Chinese should get credit for coming up with
the idea almost two thousand years ago. Other accounts
mention a monk named Berthold Schwartz who lived in
Freiburg, Germany, in the fourteenth century.
One day, as the story goes, Berthold was making a medici-
nal mix from three readily available ingredients – sulfur,
charcoal, and sodium nitrite. After grinding each of the
chemicals into fine powders, he combined them and placed a
stone on top of the container to act as a loose-fitting lid. Later
Berthold struck a flint to light a fire. By chance a
few sparks flew into the container, igniting the
mixture. It exploded with a bang, hurling
the stone upward with so much force
that it smashed through the roof.
Fascinated, the monk mixed other
batches of the explosive combina-
tion. He even stuffed some into a
hollow tube that was closed at one
end. After putting a stone ball on top of
46 Larry Verstraete

the open end, Berthold touched a flame to a tiny hole in the
side of the sealed tube. The mixture exploded, propelling the
stone ball with great force. Eureka! The first gun. Or so the
story goes.
B enjamin Franklin (1750)

LIGHTNING ROD
Benjamin Franklin – American politician, inventor, and a man
with an odd sense of humor – set out to dazzle his friends. He
invited them to a Christmas party in his home. Once every-
one had gathered, Franklin brought out a live turkey, the
main course for dinner. Electricity was a fairly new source of
energy at the time, and Franklin hoped to impress his friends
by killing the turkey with it.
But things went wrong. Franklin accidentally touched one

of the connectors and was sent flying. He survived, but the
loud bang and simultaneous flash of light produced by the
discharge reminded him of lightning. The experience led
Franklin to his most famous and dangerous investigation –
launching a kite in a thunderstorm to test the properties of
lightning. Eventually, Franklin invented the lightning rod, a
safety device that diverts lightning to the ground and is still
used in buildings today.
James Hargreaves (176 4)

SPINNING JENNY
James Hargreaves, a weaver and carpenter, was watching
someone use a spinning wheel when suddenly the spinning
wheel fell over. As it lay on its side, the wheel continued to
turn and so did the spindle or shaft on which the thread was
wound. But instead of being in a horizontal position parallel
to the ground, the spindle was now in a vertical position and
sticking up in the air. The accident gave Hargreaves an idea.
If the spindle was set in an upright position, more than one
could be used at a time. Several threads could be spun at once.
By 1764, Hargreaves had developed a machine with upright
spindles that could spin five times faster than by hand. He
called it the “spinning jenny” after his daughter Jenny.
Thomas Edison (1877)

PHONOGRAPH
Thomas Edison, the famous American inventor, was working
on a telephone, hoping to find a way to improve it. When he
spoke into the receiver, a needle fastened to the diaphragm
vibrated, accidentally pricking Edison’s finger. That incident
48 Larry Verstraete

made Edison stop and wonder. If sound vibrations were
passed along a needle, could they etch lines into a soft mate-
rial? Would a needle passing over those same lines repeat
the original sound? Inspired by the accident, Edison went on
to invent the world’s first “talking machine”, a device which
duplicated sound by passing a vibrating needle over grooves
that had been cut into tin foil. Edison’s invention was the
forerunner of the sophisticated sound-recording devices used
today.
Wilson Greatb atch (1956)

IMPLANTABLE PACEMAKER
While building an oscillator to record the sound of a heart-
beat, American inventor Wilson Greatbatch mistakenly used
the wrong type of transistor. Instead of recording sounds, the
device produced electrical impulses. The impulses mimicked
the rhythm of a human heartbeat, and Greatbatch imme-
diately realized the value of his error. “I stared at that the
thing in disbelief, thinking this was exactly the properties of
a pacemaker.”
Pacemakers of the time were bulky, external devices
that delivered electrical shocks to stimulate and regulate a
patient’s heartbeat. With his transistor-operated instrument,
Greatbatch saw a way to miniaturize the pacemaker and make
it one that could be surgically placed inside the body. In May
1958, he demonstrated the product’s usefulness by implanting
it in a dog. By 1960, Greatbatch’s invention was being used in
human subjects, giving added life and mobility to people with
heart trouble.
Ichiro Endo (1977)

INKJET PRINTER
While looking for alternative methods of printing for the
Canon Company in Japan, engineer Ichiro Endo accidentally
dropped a hot soldering iron on to a syringe filled with ink.
Moments later, Endo noticed ink seeping from the syringe
nozzle. He realized that heat had boiled the ink and forced
bubbles to shoot out the end. Curious about the phenomenon,
Endo recreated the incident and filmed it with a high-speed
camera. Within 3 days of the accident, Endo and his team of
engineers had built a working prototype of a new device – the
ink-jet printer still used today.
50 Larry Verstraete

CHAPTER 3
OPPORTUNITY
KNOCKS
51
Coincidences and chance events happen to us all the time.
Usually we don’t notice. They don’t alter our lives. But to
an observant person, to one on the brink of change or facing
a problem, chance occurrences can be a source of inspira-
tion. Consider the case of Samuel Morse, an American por-
trait painter.
When Morse boarded a ship in France on October 1, 1832,
he was a man at the peak of his artistic career. On the second
evening of the voyage across the Atlantic, Morse and a few
other passengers gathered in the dining room. A discussion
began. The topic: electricity.
One of the passengers described how to make an electro-
magnet by wrapping coils of insulated wire around a metal
rod and then connecting the wires to a battery. The greater
the number of coils, he told the others, the greater the elec-
tromagnet’s power.
One of the passengers asked a question. “If you use more
wire, won’t you slow the electricity? Won’t it take longer for
the electricity to travel?”
“No,” the knowledgeable man explained. “Electricity passes
instantly over any length of wire, even if it is a mile long.”
Hours later, while most passengers slept, Samuel Morse lay
awake in bed, still thinking about the man’s words. Electricity
passes instantly over any length of wire.
Suppose . . . Morse wondered . . . suppose a message could
be sent along with the electrical current. Would the message
be carried instantly, too?
By morning, Morse had reached a life-changing decision.
He abandoned his artistic career and devoted his time and
fortune to finding a way of sending messages at the speed
of electricity.
The simple conversation aboard the ship spawned a brain-
wave. After years of trial and error, frustration and failure,
Morse succeeded in launching a revolutionary invention that
used electromagnets to send rapid-fire messages. Morse’s
invention – the telegraph – and the code of dots and dashes
that Morse also invented, changed the world of commu-
nication, bringing news to the masses almost as soon as
it happened.
In this chapter, unexpected twists of time and place – those

coincidences, chance encounters, and casual observations that
many of us ignore – become ripe opportunities for discovery
and invention instead.
54 Larry Verstraete

René Theophile Laennec – 1816
CHILDREN’S GAME,
DOCTOR’S TOOL
If you put your ear against someone’s chest, you might hear
the person’s heart beating. Until 1816, that’s how doctors
examined their patients. Then René Laennec, a Paris doctor,
stumbled upon something better.
On his way to visit a patient one day, Dr. Laennec walked
along the streets deep in thought. His patient, a young woman
with heart disease, was extremely overweight. Laennec
worried that he might not be able to hear her heart beating.
The sound of laughter interrupted his thoughts. Several
children were playing a game on a pile of old lumber. While
one child pressed his ear against one end of a long wooden
beam, another child tapped the other end. The children
squealed with delight when they heard the sound travel
through the length of board.
Later, as he was about to examine his patient
at her home, Laennec recalled the children’s
game. Why, of course! He took a sheet of
paper and rolled it into a tube. When he
pressed one end of the tube against his
patient’s chest and listened at the other
end, he heard the movements of her
heart clearly.
Laennec experimented with different
materials for his listening device. Being an
expert wood turner, he produced a cylinder of wood about
30 centimeters (12 inches) long. It was hollow in the center
and had adjustable cups at each end. When asked to give his
invention a name, René Laennec combined two Greek words
– stethos, meaning ‘chest’, and skopos, meaning ‘observer’, and
created a new word – stethoscope.
Today doctors use a variation of this instrument that was
inspired by a children’s game. It may look different than Dr
Laennec’s original invention, but the stethoscope remains the
simplest way for a doctor to listen to the beating heart.

Children at play have been involved in other important
discoveries. In 1812, while playing along a rocky beach
in England, twelve year-old Mary Anning spotted an
unusual feature in the limestone cliffs – a narrow skull
with rows of pointed teeth. The skull turned out to
belong to a long-extinct sea reptile which scientists
dubbed Ichthyosaur – “fish-lizard”.
56 Larry Verstraete

William B eaumont – 1822
HOLE IN THE STOMACH
William Beaumont, an army surgeon, was part of a peace-
keeping force the United States Army stationed on Mackinac
Island in Lake Huron, near the shores of present-day
Michigan. The ambitious Dr. Beaumont felt that his talents
were wasted on the calm little island. Even at the peak of
the fur trading season, few incidents called for a surgeon’s
skills. But then along came Alexis St. Martin and the doctor’s
peaceful life changed forever.
Alexis St. Martin was a carefree, adventure-loving, French
Canadian youth. He had been hired as a voyageur by the
American Fur Trading Company to transport furs by canoe
through the wilderness of North America. With the fur
trading season drawing to a close, St. Martin, like other voya-
geurs returned to the small village on Mackinac Island that
served as the company’s headquarters.
On June 6, 1822, St. Martin was relaxing with
other men in the company store.
Nearby a drunken voyageur
toyed with his newly purchased
gun. Suddenly the gun went
off. A full load of buckshot
and powder ripped into
Alexis St. Martin’s body just
below his chest.
Dr. Beaumont raced to the youth’s side, amazed that the
voyageur was still alive. A huge hole as large as a human
hand penetrated St. Martin’s abdomen. Part of his stomach
and part of one lung hung out of the cavity.
Beaumont cleaned the wound and applied a dressing. He
fully expected the voyageur to die. But Alexis St. Martin did
not. His wound healed in a peculiar way. Rather than settling
back into the abdomen, his stomach attached itself to the
chest wall. Scar tissue formed around his wound, but the hole
remained open. A loose flap of stomach lining hung over it
like a shade pulled over a window. By pushing aside the flap,
Dr. Beaumont could see inside St Martin’s stomach.
Beaumont recognized a rare opportunity that he couldn’t
pass. Curious about digestion and how the body processed
food, he proposed a series of painless experiments to Alexis
St. Martin. No longer having the strength or endurance to
work as a voyageur, and dependent on the doctor for food and
shelter, Alexis St. Martin agreed.
In one experiment, Beaumont tied tiny bits of food to silk
threads and lowered them through the hole into St. Martin’s
stomach. Now and then he lifted them out, observed the state
of digestion, and then returned them to the stomach. In other
tests, Beaumont extracted, analyzed, and experimented with
stomach juices. Once he even poked a thermometer through
the hole to check the stomach’s temperature.
For twelve years, Dr. Beaumont conducted experiment
after experiment. He became a respected and admired author-
ity across North America and Europe. His findings startled
doctors and scientists, and led to the development of a new
58 Larry Verstraete

branch of science – nutrition, the study of food and how the
body uses it.
But what of Alexis St. Martin? For fifty-eight years after
the accident, St. Martin continued to be a medical wonder.
He received dozens of invitations to appear before interested
groups and show his now famous hole. The fees that he col-
lected helped support his growing family.
DID YOU KNOW?

Although his methods were unusual, Dr. Beaumont’s
experiments must have been harmless. Alexis St. Martin
lived to the ripe old age of eighty-three, outliving the
doctor by twenty-seven years.
John and Allan M cIntosh – 1835
FRUIT FROM A SINGLE TREE
Many varieties of apples are grown worldwide, but the undis-
puted favorite of many apple-eaters is the McIntosh Red.
Millions of this crisp, juicy fruit are harvested each year. But
the McIntosh Red had humble beginnings, and if it wasn’t for
a bit of luck this popular fruit might not be in kitchens today.
In 1811, a Scottish settler named John McIntosh moved to
a homestead in Dundas County, Ontario, Canada. To prepare
the land for farming, he cleared trees off his property. Hidden
in the dense bush, John found a cluster of twenty young
apple trees.
To the young farmer, finding the trees was as good as
finding gold. Apples were a valuable commodity to pioneer
settlers. The fruit added variety to an otherwise bland diet.
Apples were versatile, too. They could be eaten straight off
the tree in summer, stored in a cool place for the winter,
cooked into cakes, pies, and other delicacies or even squeezed
into refreshing juice or cider.
John uprooted the young trees and transplanted them
closer to his home. The following season, he had an ample
supply of tasty apples. However, one of the trees produced an
especially sweet and delicious fruit. It quickly became a favor-
ite with the whole family and with neighbors near and far.
Unfortunately, one tree could hardly produce enough fruit
to satisfy a single family, let alone the entire neighborhood.
Although John tried planting seeds taken from the fruit, the
60 Larry Verstraete

new trees did not bear the same apples. As John soon discov-
ered, apple trees do not “breed true”. That is, seeds from the
fruit do not produce apples exactly like the parent tree.
For over twenty years, the tree continued to bear fruit, but
never enough to satisfy everyone. Then one day in 1835, a
wandering farm hand happened to hear the story of the single
tree with the delicious fruit. He offered to help.
Taking a sharp knife, he cut a short twig from the apple
tree, walked over to a young seedling tree, carved a small slit
into its bark near the top, and inserted the twig. Using some
twine, he wrapped it around the joint to keep it in place.
This procedure is called grafting. As
the seedling grows,
the twig grows as
well. It becomes the
top of the new tree
and bears the same
fruit as the original.
The method worked.
Allan – John’s oldest son
– began traveling around the area
selling branches of the tree to other farmers. With each
sale, he showed them how to graft the branches to their own
apple seedlings.
The original tree on John McIntosh’s farm died in 1910.
By then the McIntosh Red could be found all over Canada
and the United States. Today offspring of the original tree
grow in far off places all around the world.
D avid Fife – 1843
SEEDS IN THE MAIL
David Fife was an unusual man. Instead of planting a single
type of grain like his neighbors in Peterborough, Ontario,
Canada, Fife planted many different varieties each year. By
dividing his farm into small experimental plots, each one
growing a different type of wheat, he hoped to find the hardi-
est, healthiest, and most productive strain.
In 1843, Fife received some grain seeds in the mail from
a friend in Scotland. Fife’s wife, Jane, was ill at the time so
he could not plant the seeds right away. When he finally got
around to sowing them, it was late in the season. Most of the
other strains were growing by this time.
At first, the new wheat seemed doomed to failure. Out of
all the seeds, only one sprouted. Fife was tempted to plow
the single plant under and start over with another strain
of wheat. But then he noticed something unusual about the
plant. It had three stalks instead of just one, and it seemed to
grow quickly. By mid-summer, it had caught up to the others.
When most of the other strains weakened because of disease,
this one remained healthy and strong.
The new plant ripened earlier than the others. Then, just
as it was ready to harvest, one of the cows broke through the
garden gate, trampling and eating every plant in sight. Jane
spotted the cow from the kitchen window just as its tongue
was about to wrap around the tender stalk of the new wheat.
She ran into the yard, waving her apron high in the air,
62 Larry Verstraete

yelling at the top of her lungs. The cow wandered away, and
the wheat was saved.
From this single plant, Fife obtained more seeds. The new
wheat was especially hardy, enabling it to survive diseases and
cold temperatures that killed other strains. It also required a
shorter growing season which meant that it could be planted
later in the spring and harvested earlier in the fall. As well as
producing a high yield of grain, flour from this wheat made
delicious breads and pastries.
This new variety of wheat was called Red Fife. It proved

to be ideal for the rugged prairies of Canada, the northern
United States, and other areas around the world.
1848
PERSONALITY SWITCH
One day Phineas Gage was a cheerful, ambitious man. The
next he was snarly, lazy, obnoxious, and the world of medicine
was never quite the same.
Twenty-five year-old Phineas Gage was a track layer for
the Vermont Railway Company. Part of his job was to blast
away rocks to prepare the rail bed for new track. One day
Gage poured gunpowder into holes that had been drilled into
the rock. To pack the gunpowder, he used a long, pointed iron
rod called a tamping iron.
Usually, this was a fairly safe activity. That day, it wasn`t.
The tamping iron struck a nearby rock, creating a spark. The
gunpowder ignited and blew the rod right at Gage’s head.
The pointed end hit just below his left eye, ripped through his
brain, and punched a hole in the top of his skull.
The tamping rod landed 45 meters (148 ft.) away and
Phineas Gage was hurled to the ground. Blood poured from
the wound. His hands and legs twitched. His co-workers
figured he was dead, but in a few minutes Gage sat up, dazed
and bloody, yet somehow still alive and able to speak. He was
carried in a sitting position to a nearby town where local
doctors treated him.
Gage’s chances for survival were slim. He had lost a lot of
blood, and in a matter of days, the wound became infected. A
local cabinet maker was hired to build a coffin. To everyone’s
surprise, however, Gage made an amazing recovery. In just
64 Larry Verstraete

three weeks he was up and about, anxious to return to the life
he once had.
But Gage was not entirely well. From the moment of the
accident, he was a totally different person. His character
changed. Instead of being the happy, responsible man he once
was, Gage became abusive, argumentative, and unreliable.
One person described him as a man with “the strength of
an ox and an evil temper to match.” He lost his job with the
railway company, and eventually joined a traveling circus as a
sideshow curiosity.
The incident attracted the attention of doctors around
the country. Phineas Gage`s accident proved that the entire
brain was not necessary for life, but the sudden change in his
personality raised many questions. Was there an area of the
brain that was solely responsible for character? Were differ-
ent regions of the brain responsible for other functions such
as language, speech or sense of smell?
To find the answers, doctors examined and questioned

Gage. They conducted tests and found examples of other
people who had suffered head injuries. Slowly, over many
years, pieces of the brain puzzle began to fall into place.
Doctors now know that the frontal cortex, the area of
Gage`s brain that was damaged, controls personality. They
know, too, that other regions govern other functions. Today
surgeons can even pinpoint these sites and do delicate opera-
tions to correct damaged areas, but in Phineas Gage’s time
little was known about the brain. It took a freak accident
along a deserted stretch of railway to lead us down the path
to discovery.
DID YOU KNOW?

After his death, the tamping rod and the skull
of Phineas Gage were sent to the
museum at Harvard Medical School
where they are still on display.
The skull shows the hole caused
by the 6 kilogram (13 lb.) tamping
rod while a cast of his head
shows the scar that the wound caused.
66 Larry Verstraete

D onald Johanson – 1974
A FLOOD OF BONES
As soon as Donald Johanson awoke on the morning of
November 30, 1974, he sensed the day would be special. “I
felt it was one of those days when you should press your
luck,” he said later, “one of those days when something ter-
rific might happen.”
Johanson was a paleoanthropologist, a scientist who
searches for fossil evidence of the earliest humans. For weeks,
he had been scouring a desert region in Ethiopia, Africa. He
had found the occasional bone fragment, usually of some
animal, but nothing substantial, nothing that gave him clues
about human life long ago. He would search the area one last
time, he told himself.
A heavy rain had recently swept through the region,
causing a flash flood. Johanson walked along a gully created
by the flood. He dodged overturned stones and picked his
way along deep furrows formed by the rushing water. After
walking for hours, he was ready to give up. He had found
nothing unusual, no treasures of the past.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he spotted a small
object protruding from the eroded bank. It was a fossilized
arm bone. Scattered nearby he found other bone fragments.
Johanson quickly realized that the bones were human-
like and very old. He hurried back to the base camp to tell
his colleagues.
Over the next three weeks, the team excavated the site and
found dozens of bones. All of them belonged to a single indi-
vidual: an adult female who had lived millions of years
ago. Johanson called her Lucy after a popular Beatles
song of the day titled Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
Nature had given Johanson a helping hand, but
more than luck was involved in the discovery.
Although the flash flood had churned the soil,
bringing the long-hidden bones to the surface,
it was Johanson’s keen eye that recognized
their true value. The discovery caused great
excitement in scientific circles. Lucy proved to
the oldest and most complete prehistoric human
ancestor ever found until that time.
DID YOU KNOW?

In 1851, quarrymen digging a cave in the Neander Valley region
of Germany found a fossilized skull cap, rib bones, and
other skeletal pieces. The fossils were over 300,000 old
and belonged to an extinct species of primitive humans with
ape-like features known as Neanderthals. The accidental
discovery of the Neanderthals is credited with starting
a new branch of science – paleoanthropology, the study
of the origins of the human species.
68 Larry Verstraete

MO RE OPP O RTUNITY
KNO CKS
Elias Howe, Jr. (1839)

SEWING MACHINE
Elias Howe, Jr. worked as an assistant in a Boston machine
shop. One day he overheard the owner and another worker
argue. Elias tried to concentrate on his job, but as the voices
grew louder, he couldn’t help but listen to their conversation.
“Why waste time on a knitting machine?” he heard the owner
say. “Invent a sewing machine and you’ll make a fortune.”
To the penniless Elias – who earned only two or three
dollars a week – these words seemed like magic. A fortune?
Just for a machine that sewed?
These simple words fuelled Elias’s imagination. For years
he struggled, passing over one disappointment after another
until at long last he achieved his goal and invented the first
modern sewing machine. When he died in 1872, at the age
of forty-eight, he had amassed an incredible fortune – over
thirteen million dollars.
George Eastman (1874)
KODAK CAMERA
When young George Eastman set out on his vacation, he
decided to take photographs of the trip. He gathered the
cumbersome equipment used at the time: a bulky camera
the size of a microwave oven, a heavy tripod, and assorted
glass plates, trays, chemicals, and other supplies to develop
the film. Picture-taking proved so difficult and expensive that
Eastman canceled his trip and devoted all of his spare time
to finding a way of making it simpler and more convenient.
After four years of trial and error, he invented a small box
camera that used lightweight film instead of heavy glass
plates. His camera, the Kodak, revolutionized photography
and made picture-taking available to everyone.
Christian K . Nelson (1920)

ICE CREAM BAR
Christian Nelson owned a candy and ice cream store in
Onawa, Iowa. One day a young boy came
into the store clutching a few coins
and wanting a chocolate bar.
After a few seconds, the boy
changed his mind and ordered
an ice cream sandwich. Before
70 Larry Verstraete

Nelson could fill the order, the boy switched again. Make it a
chocolate bar after all.
Why couldn’t the boy have both tasty treats at the same
time? Nelson thought. He experimented with chocolate and
ice cream, hoping to find some way to make the chocolate
stick to the surface of the ice cream. Eventually, he succeeded
and created the first ever ice cream bar.
William F. Grimes (1954)

TEMPLE OF MITHRAS
After 57 days of intense bombing by Nazi Germany during
World War II, large areas of the city of London, England,
lay in ruins. Archeologist William F. Grimes, director of
the London Museum, seized the moment to search through
the rubble for the lost town of Londinium, a Roman settle-
ment founded in 43 A.D. In 1954, along Walbrook Street,
his team of archeologists discovered the ruins of the Temple
of Mithras, built by the Romans between 240 and 250 A.D.
Today marble sculptures and other treasures from the site are
on display in the Museum of London.
Philippe Kahn (1997)
CELL PHONE CAMERA
During much of his wife’s eighteen-hour labor, American
entrepreneur Philippe Kahn sat at a nearby desk, cell phone,
laptop, and digital camera at his side, ready to snap pictures
of his first-born child. Internet technology was still in its
early stages, and Kahn thought about the complicated steps
ahead – downloading photos to his computer, posting them
on a website, contacting relatives to tell them where to find
the pictures . . .
With time on his hands, Kahn fiddled with the equip-
ment, aiming to simplify the process. Kahn wrote a computer
program, made a few trips to Radio Shack for supplies, and
by the time his daughter Sophie made her appearance, he
was armed and ready. His makeshift camera-phone-computer
device streamlined the entire operation, allowing him to snap
pictures and automatically post them on the Web.
Kahn’s invention was the first of its kind and the forerun-
ner to the much smaller, built-in cell phone camera carried by
millions today.
72 Larry Verstraete

CHAPTER 4
EXPERIMENTAL
TWISTS
73
Think of the words “scientist” and “inventor”. What comes
to mind?
It’s likely that you get an image of a person in a cluttered
laboratory wearing a white lab coat and surrounded by bub-
bling mixtures. The person is tinkering with bottles, vials,
and test tubes. As he or she pours one solution into another,
the liquid froths and changes color. Clouds of choking smoke
billow across the room. Clearly something has gone wrong.
This is the image often painted of scientists and inventors.

It is a distorted image, but in one way at least, it is accurate.
Experiments do not always go as planned. Sometimes the
results are unusual, unexpected, even disappointing.
These surprises aren’t necessarily bad. Sometimes unfore-
seen kinks in an experiment force a scientist or inventor to
pause, study the situation, and see unexpected possibilities.
Sometimes a twist of fate during an experiment can be the
key that unlocks the door to a totally new discovery.
Elihu Thomson – 1876
FLASH OF GREEN
No other science class quite matched Elihu Thomson’s.
While most teachers in the 1870s taught only by lecturing,
Thomson’s classes were filled with dynamic demonstra-
tions. He challenged his students at Central High School in
Philadelphia to think, question, and then experiment in the
school laboratory, the only one of its kind in the United States.
As the young professor’s popularity grew, he was fre-
quently asked to be a speaker at public functions. In the fall of
1876, the Franklin Institute – a group of distinguished scien-
tists – invited Elihu Thomson to give five winter lectures to
its members.
Following his usual style, Thomson carefully prepared his
material and included several demonstrations to highlight
key points. The first four lectures went as planned. The fifth
did not.
In the last lecture, Thomson wanted to show electricity in
action. On a table in front of his audience, he placed a Leyden
jar. Beside it, he had a hand-operated electrostatic generator
and several copper wires.
First Thomson connected the generator to the Leyden jar.
He cranked it vigorously, sending electrical charges to the jar
where they were stored. In this way, he had a large source of
electricity ready for use.
Thomson planned to cross two copper wires that led away
from the Leyden jar. When the two wires made contact, a
76 Larry Verstraete

sudden spark would prove to the audience that electricity had
passed from one wire to another.
The audience knew of Thomson’s reputation for showman-
ship. No one wanted to miss the action. The hall was hushed,
all eyes watching the equipment at the front. Thomson care-
fully brought the wires together. Instead of the spark that
Thomson expected, a bright green flash sizzled across the
points of contact. Startled but unfazed, Thomson picked up
the two wires. They were solidly fused together.
Although Thomson knew something special had happened,
he did not want to lose his audience. He dismissed the unusual
incident with a casual remark and continued his lecture.
Later in his laboratory, Thomson toyed with the fused
wires. How and why did this happen? Long years of experi-
mentation followed. Eventually, Thomson devised a practi-
cal way of using electricity to melt metals and weld them
together. Before long, dozens of industries from shipbuilding
to toy manufacturing were using electric welding to join metal
parts cleanly and simply.
Louis Pasteur – 188 0
A WEAKENED STRAIN
OF BACTERIA
Smallpox . . . scarlet fever . . . polio. Years ago these were
common diseases. Today early vaccinations have made them
almost non-existent. A bit of carelessness over a hundred
years ago helped make them that way.
Louis Pasteur, a chemistry professor in Paris, believed that
microscopic germs caused diseases. He thought that germs
were outside the body, and diseases started when germs
entered it. Not many people shared his belief, but Pasteur was
determined to prove his ideas were right.
Around 1880, he began to study a contagious animal
disease called chicken cholera. An associate sent him the head
of a rooster that had died of the disease. Convinced that the
rooster’s blood contained disease-causing germs, Pasteur
tried to isolate them.
First he prepared a bottle of broth from chicken gristle.
He added a drop of the rooster’s blood and placed the liquid
in a warm place. After a few hours, Pasteur examined a drop
of the mixture under his microscope. With food and warmth,
the germs had multiplied. Hundreds swarmed in the culture.
Pasteur mixed a tiny drop of the culture with one chicken’s
food. Soon after eating the mixture, the chicken died. Pasteur
tested the effects again and again. Each time a chicken died,
adding proof to Pasteur’s theory that disease started when
germs entered a healthy body.
78 Larry Verstraete

Fascinated by his experiments, Pasteur worked long and
hard, convinced he was close to gathering the evidence he
needed. His wife was concerned with his health, however.
When she persuaded him to go on a well-deserved three-
month vacation with his family, Pasteur left two assistants to
look after the cholera cultures.
In Pasteur’s absence, his overworked assistants figured
they needed a holiday, too. For weeks, the cultures were left
unattended. Many of the germs died and the strain weakened.
When he returned, Pasteur was angry but also curious.
Would the weakened germs affect healthy chickens in the
same way as before? Pasteur injected several chickens with
the weakened cultures. Instead of dying, the chickens became
only slightly ill and then recovered completely. This was new!
Pasteur experimented with two groups of chickens. One

group received injections of the weakened cholera strain. The
other group – the control group – didn’t. Afterward, Pasteur
injected both groups of chickens with a fresh batch of cholera.
Then he waited.
Over the space of a few hours, the chickens in the control
group died one by one while the chickens injected with the
weakened strain remained healthy. Injecting animals with
weak or dead germs seemed to cause a slight case of the
disease, but also provided protection if the animal contracted
a stronger dose of the same disease later.
At first, Pasteur believed he could control all kinds of
infectious diseases with injections of stale cholera germs.
He soon discovered that cholera vaccinations protected only
against cholera. Other diseases were caused by specialized
germs and had to be treated with cultures made from those
specific germs.
Louis Pasteur’s work with neglected and weakened cul-
tures resulted in the development of vaccines. Today millions
of people around the world are vaccinated to protect against
diseases that once would have caused many deaths.
80 Larry Verstraete

DID YOU KNOW?
Although Pasteur was the first person to culture germs for
vaccinations, the use of vaccines actually started almost a
century earlier thanks to another chance incident. Edward
Jenner, an English doctor, overheard a milkmaid talking
about the deadly disease, smallpox. “I cannot have that,” she
said, “for I have had cowpox.”
Jenner realized that there was truth to the milkmaid’s
words. Cowpox was a mild disease sometimes spread from
cows to those who touched their udders. Those who caught
cowpox never seemed to catch more deadly smallpox. Is
someone infected with cowpox protected from smallpox?
Jenner wondered.
To test his idea, Jenner needed a human subject. People
of his time so feared smallpox that the promise of being
immune from it seemed attractive. Jenner persuaded the
parents of a young boy to allow their son to participate
in an experiment. First Jenner scratched the boy’s skin
with fluid from the sores of a cowpox victim. Three
weeks later Jenner scratched the boy’s skin again, this
time with a small amount of smallpox fluid. As expected,
the boy did not become infected.
To explain the disease-fighting method, Jenner coined
the word “vaccination” from the Latin word vacca,
meaning “cow.”
John and Will Kellogg – 1894
A STICKY MESS
Millions of people start each day with a bowl of cereal flakes.
John Harvey Kellogg would be pleased. So would Will Keith
Kellogg. The two brothers invented the stuff.
In the late 1800s, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg operated a
medical boarding house in Battle Creek, Michigan. During
their stay, patients were expected to follow Dr. Kellogg’s
prescription for health — plenty of fresh air, exercise, a good
night’s rest, and a diet free of coffee, alcohol, spices, and meat.
Most people had no trouble with the fresh air and exercise
parts, but patients accustomed to spicy meat dishes often
complained that the vegetarian meals tasted bland.
Always on the lookout for ways to make his food taste
better, Kellogg and his younger brother, Will Keith, experi-
mented with various grain mixtures. They spent evenings in
the hospital kitchen boiling, mashing, and baking nuts and
grains. Boiling removed starch and created new flavors and
textures, but it also made grain gooey and gummy. No matter
how many times they tried, the Kelloggs were left with a
sticky mess that baked into disgusting, doughy globs.
One evening while they were boiling yet another batch of
grain, the Kellogg brothers were called away on urgent busi-
ness. They hurried out of the kitchen, leaving the pot to cool
on the stove. By the time they returned to their experiment
two days later, the over-boiled mush had started to dry and
go moldy.
82 Larry Verstraete

Instead of throwing it out, they continued their experi-
ment. They passed the dried dough through rollers to flatten
it. To their surprise, each grain formed a separate flake and
each flake toasted evenly in the oven. With more experiment-
ing, the Kelloggs found the perfect formula for boiling and
waiting that produced light, tasty, and unmoldy flakes.
From a health point of view, Dr. Kellogg was satisfied with
the flakes. Not so Will. He saw business opportunities in their
discovery. Eventually, he bought his brother’s share of the
flake invention, processed and packaged the cereal in Battle
Creek, and created the Kelloggs food empire we know today.
In 1928, while tinkering with new gum recipes in his spare
time, accountant Walter E. Diemer of the Fleer Chewing
Gum Company in Philadelphia produced a batch with
unusual properties. It was less sticky and more elastic
than regular chewing gum, stretched easily, and could
be blown into bubbles. Diemer looked for a way to tint
the bland looking gum to make it more appealing. The
only food coloring available in the company lab was
a shocking pink. As a last resort, Diemer added it to
the mix. Marketed by the Fleer Chewing Gum Company
as Dubble Bubble and sold for a penny a piece, the pink
bubble gum was wildly successful. “It was an accident,”
Diemer said later. “I was doing something else and ended
up with something with bubbles.”
84 Larry Verstraete

Wilhelm Roentgen – 1895
GLOW IN THE DARK
On November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Roentgen hurried through
an experiment so he could get home in time for dinner. He
wrapped a sheet of heavy black paper around a long, empty
glass cylinder known as a cathode ray tube. He prepared a
chemically treated cardboard screen to place near it. Then
he hooked up the terminals of a power source to two metal
plates inside the cathode ray tube and turned off the lights in
the room.
Cathode ray tubes produce a type of radiation known as
cathode rays which cause the glass walls of the tube and the
air around it to fluoresce or glow an eerie lime-green color.
Certain chemicals held close to the tube fluoresce as well, but
the range is short – a few centimeters at best. Any farther
away from the tube and the green glow vanishes.
That November day, with time marching ever closer to the
dinner hour, Roentgen hurried through the last steps of his
experiment hoping to discover more about the rays’ proper-
ties. Would cathode rays penetrate the heavy paper sheathing
he’d wrapped around the tube? Would they cause the chemi-
cally treated cardboard screen to glow? Based on his previous
experiments, Roentgen expected they would.
When Roentgen shut off the lights and turned on the
power, no light eked through the paper shield. There was no
halo of green around the tube and none from objects nearby.
This surprised Roentgen. Then, almost immediately, he
realized he’d made a mistake. In his hurry, he’d forgotten to
set up the cardboard screen. No wonder.
Roentgen glanced back. Where did he leave the piece of
cardboard? A ghostly green light shimmered from far across
the dark room. Roentgen shut off the power to the cathode
ray tube. The glow immediately disappeared. When he turned
on the current again, the green glow returned.
Curious about the source, Roentgen lit a match. The glow
was coming from the cardboard screen that he’d mistakenly
left lying on a bench. Roentgen knew that cathode rays
couldn’t travel that far. The tube had to be giving off another
type of radiation, one with different properties than cathode
rays possessed.
Throughout the night and during the following day,
Roentgen performed many experiments with the mysterious
ray. He knew that it could travel through the air and through
paper, but could it travel through other objects, too?
It did. Glass, wood, rubber, and other materials could not
block the ray. It traveled through them as if they weren’t even
there. Only one metal seemed to stop it – lead.
But the most surprising property of the ray was discov-
ered by chance. One day while he had the cathode ray tube
switched on, Roentgen moved a small piece of lead into its
path. On a screen behind the object, he saw its shadow. But
there was something else, too – an outline of the bones in
Roentgen’s hand. The rays had penetrated human flesh.
Roentgen asked his wife to help in his next experiment.
She held her hand between the cathode ray tube and an unex-
posed photographic plate. When Roentgen developed the
86 Larry Verstraete

plate, he saw a permanent picture of the bones of his wife’s
hand imprinted on it, surrounded by a dim outline of the flesh.
Terrified that she might be seeing the ghost of her own hand,
his wife refused to participate in any further experiments.
Because so much was unknown about the rays, Roentgen
called them X-rays, a name we still use. Today
Wilhelm Roentgen’s mysterious ray has
many uses, from detecting flaws in
the welded joints of spaceships to
enabling doctors to “see” into the
human body to look for broken bones.
DID YOU KNOW?

One of the most common modern X-ray machines is the
security scanner found at airports. By using low-
level X-rays, the scanner illuminates purses and
suitcases, showing their insides without damaging
the contents.
Henri B ecquerel – 1896
MYSTERIOUS IMAGES
For his experiment, Henri Becquerel, a French scientist,
needed only a sunny day and a few supplies – a sheet of black
paper . . . an unexposed photographic plate . . . a crystal of
uranium salt.
Becquerel’s experiment was pretty basic. He wrapped the
photographic plate in the black paper and placed it in bright
sunlight. On top of the paper, he set a crystal of uranium salt
– a radioactive substance that fluoresced or glowed a strange
blue color in sunlight. To see if radiation had penetrated the
paper, Becquerel developed the photographic plate later by
passing it through a series of chemical baths.
Although the experiment was simple in design, Becquerel
hoped to answer complex questions. What caused uranium to
fluoresce? What properties did its radiation possess?
Becquerel figured that sunlight triggered uranium’s reac-
tion, and his experiment was designed to prove it. Because
the photographic plate was enclosed in black paper, sunlight
could not penetrate it. Anything appearing on the plate must
come from the glowing crystal that seemed to fluoresce only
when sunlight was present.
After each sunny day, when Becquerel developed the plate,
he found – as expected – a well-defined image of the crystal.
He believed he was well on his way to proving the importance
of sunlight to uranium’s radiation.
88 Larry Verstraete

On February 26, 1896, Becquerel repeated his experiment.
But that day and the next two, the skies were so cloudy that
the crystal hardly glowed at all. Impatiently, Becquerel devel-
oped the plate anyway expecting to find only a faint image of
the crystal.
To his surprise, the crystal’s image was as sharp as ever.
Sunlight did not seem to have any effect on the amount of
radiation or on the strength of the rays the crystal produced.
Quickly Becquerel set up another experi-
ment. This time, he placed the wrapped pho-
tographic plate with the crystal
on top inside a dark cupboard.
When he developed the plate
a few days later, a clear impres-
sion of the crystal showed again.
Even without sunlight, without
glowing at all, the crystal still
emitted radiation.
Becquerel’s accidental discovery proved that
some materials are naturally radioactive. Unaided by the sun
or other sources of energy, they emit invisible rays all on
their own.
Several years passed before the importance of Becquerel’s
discovery was fully recognized, but his work opened up a
new branch of science – the study of the energy locked inside
radioactive substances such as uranium. It was the beginning
of the nuclear age.
Alexander Fleming – 1928
CLEAR RINGS,
SHRINKING PATCHES
In September 1928, having just returned from holidays, Dr.
Alexander Fleming inspected his crowded laboratory. Set
inside a London hospital, the lab was a clutter of tables and
shelves holding bottles, beakers, and dozens of small, flat
plates called culture dishes. Inside each culture dish, millions
of bacteria grew in colorful patches on a jelly-like substance.
The jelly was their food source, and encouraged by warm
conditions in the laboratory, the bacteria thrived.
The cultures of bacteria were the heart and soul of
Fleming’s research, and having been away for a few weeks, he
drilled his assistants with questions. How were the bacteria
doing? Have there been any changes?
The news Fleming received disappointed him. One night

while he was away, someone mistakenly left a window open.
Bacteria from outside infiltrated the laboratory. Now the
90 Larry Verstraete

culture dishes were contaminated. There was no way of
knowing just what kind of bacteria grew on the plates, nor
what conditions aided or hampered their growth. The doc-
tor’s work was ruined. He’d have to start over.
The news hit Fleming hard. Reluctantly he tossed dishes
into the garbage, a dreary, disheartening task, interrupted
only when one assistant walked into the room. Fleming
paused long enough to show the assistant a contaminated
plate. Shame, isn’t it? What a mess.
Suddenly Fleming stopped. He looked closer at the plate
in his hand. “That’s funny,” he said. Mold much like the one
sometimes found on bread or cheese grew along the top edge
of the plate. In a ring around the mold, Fleming noticed a
clear space. Bacteria grew right up to the ring, but not past
it, and the patches of bacteria closest to the ring seemed to be
shriveling and shrinking. Whatever the mold was, it appeared
to have mysterious powers over bacteria.
With the discovery of this strange mold, Dr. Fleming
began a new series of experiments. He took a speck of mold
off the dish and put it in some broth where it multiplied and
grew. Days later, he suctioned off a bit of the broth and added
it to other culture plates. While some bacteria on the culture
plates shriveled and died, other patches remained unaffected.
The broth seemed to target certain kinds of bacteria, but
not others.
Other experiments followed. Fleming identified the mold as
penicillium. He compared it to other kinds of mold and tested
different types in culture dishes containing bacteria. None of
the other molds had the same effect as the penicillium mold.
Fleming also injected some of the penicillium broth into a
rabbit. The rabbit remained healthy, an encouraging sign that
suggested penicillium might be safe for human use, too.
After years of research, Fleming was able to extract a drug
from the special mold. Because it came from the penicillium
mold, he called it penicillin. Today penicillin is one of the most
commonly used and effective disease-fighting antibiotics
available, capable of controlling or counteracting a number
of infections.
Sometime later, Fleming acknowledged the role of chance
in his discovery. “I have been wonderfully lucky,” he said. Luck
certainly did play a part in the discovery of penicillin, but Dr.
Fleming deserves credit, too. Without his keen observations
and years of patient research, the opportunity that fate pro-
vided would have been missed or thrown away.
DID YOU KNOW?

In 1945, Alexander Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for
Medicine for his discovery of penicillin. In an article
he wrote, Fleming gave this advice:”Never neglect an
extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be –
usually is, in fact – a false alarm that leads to nothing,
but may, on the other hand, be the clue provided by
fate to lead you to some important advance.”
92 Larry Verstraete

Julian Hill – 1934
STRETCHY STRANDS
In the 1930s, there was a worldwide shortage of natural fibers
such as silk and cotton. Chemists at the DuPont Company set
out to produce synthetic materials to take their place. Using
coal, petroleum, and other ingredients, they tried to make
artificial fibers that would be strong, but still soft and flexible
enough to weave into cloth.
The DuPont chemists mixed batch after batch of new com-
pounds. Some were too brittle and broke when stretched into
threads. Others were too soft and sticky. Many of the failures
were tossed out. Some were stored on shelves and forgotten.
One day, Julian Hill, one of the chemists, made an interest-
ing discovery. He was stirring one of the too soft mixtures
with a glass stirring stick. As he stirred, a small ball of mate-
rial collected at the end of the stick. When Hill pulled the rod
from the mixture, a long silky thread formed. The more he
pulled, the longer the thread became.
Hill called other chemists over to have a look. One of them
drew a sample from the container and pulled it. Sure enough,
a thin thread formed. Excited talk filled the room as other
scientists drew samples and tried the same thing. Then two
of them played a game. They ran down the hall and stretched
a ball of material into a thin strand the length of several
rooms. The farther apart they went, the longer and stronger
the fiber became.
Unexpectedly, Hill and his companions had discovered a
new process called cold drawing. By pulling and stretching,
they forced molecules in the fibers to realign, creating long
chains of stronger material. The cold drawing process was
the secret to creating synthetic fibers.
Du Pont scientists tried the same technique on some of the
earlier samples that had been considered failures. Many of
these could also be cold drawn to produce strong threads. One
of them turned out to be particularly strong, yet strangely
soft and delicate like silk. It was called nylon.
In history books, May 13, 1940, is sometimes called “Nylon
Day.” That day stockings made out of nylon instead of silk
went on sale for the first time in New York City. Four million
pairs were sold in the first few hours – a colossal success –
but the event might never have happened had it not been
for a lucky break and a little horseplay in a laboratory a few
years before.
94 Larry Verstraete

In 1965, while attempting to develop a lightweight,
heat-resistance fiber to reinforce radial tires, DuPont
chemist Stephanie Klowek noticed something odd about
one of her test tube samples. While the other solutions
were clear and thick as molasses, this one was cloudy
and thin as water. Later she said of the moment: “I
thought, ‘There is something different about this. This
may be useful.’”
Tests showed Klowek was right. Fibers extracted from
the solution proved to be unusually strong, stiff, and
yet remarkably lightweight. In 1971, Du Pont released
Kevlar, a new fabric woven from Klowek’s unusual
fibers. Used whenever super strength is needed, Kevlar
can be found in a range of products from bulletproof
vests and body armor to optic cables, military helmets,
skis, and brake pads.
MO RE EXP ERIM ENTA L
TWISTS
Louis D aguer re (1835)

PHOTOGRAPHY
People of his time painted or sketched pictures, but Louis
Daguerre hoped to capture images using chemicals. One day,
after experimenting with a metal sheet covered in iodine,
Daguerre carelessly left a silver spoon on its surface. Later
when he removed the spoon, Daguerre discovered a faint
image of it on the metal sheet. He was quick to realize that
silver from the spoon had reacted with the iodine. He con-
ducted a series of experiments with the chemicals and even-
tually found a way to “fix” images permanently on light sensi-
tive surfaces. Daguerre’s discoveries were the beginnings of a
new type of picture-making – photography.
96 Larry Verstraete

Alexander Graham Bell (1875)
TELEPHONE
Alexander Graham Bell, an inventor and also a teacher of the
deaf, and his assistant, Thomas Watson, were experimenting
with the telegraph when one of the keys in Watson’s trans-
mitter jammed. He plucked at the spring, trying to set it free.
In another room far away with his ear pressed to the receiver,
Bell heard a faint musical hum instead of the usual click-clack
sound of the telegraph. The incident proved to Bell that
sound could be duplicated and sent along a wire from one
place to another. Bell abandoned the original experiment and
spent his time creating a new invention – the world’s first
operational telephone.
Thomas L. Willson (1892)

ACETYLENE
In his search for an economical way to extract aluminum from
compounds like aluminum chloride, Thomas L. Willson of
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, mixed lime and coal tar, popped
the mixture into an arc furnace, and jacked the temperature
up to 2800°C (5070°F).
When he opened the furnace door later, Willson discov-
ered a new crystalline substance in the container. Wondering
if it might be sodium, he tore off a small piece and dropped it
into a bucket of water. Sodium reacts instantly and violently
with water, but this substance foamed slowly and quietly, cre-
ating a froth of bubbles.
Willson’s experiment was
a two-for-one winner. The
crystalline substance turned
out to be calcium carbide, a
substance that aided the alu-
minum extraction process
and lowered its costs. The
frothy bubbles – an acciden-
tal by-product of the water
test – turned out to be acetylene, a highly flammable gas
useful for all kinds of things from welding joints to produc-
ing fertilizers. Using Willson’s process, both chemicals could
now be produced simply, economically, and in large quantities.
98 Larry Verstraete

CHAPTER 5
CLEVER
CONNECTIONS
99
Masaru Ibuka, honorary chairman of the Sony Corporation,
often roamed the company halls, examining new products as
they were being produced. One day in 1978, he found techni-
cians in one room working on lightweight, high-quality
headphones. In another wing far down the hall, he found
other technicians at work on another new Sony product – a
small cassette tape player.
“Hmm,” thought Ibuka, “Why not combine the two prod-
ucts? Why not use the headphones in place of the speakers in
the cassette player, add batteries to provide power, and make a
small, high-quality player that people could carry anywhere?”
Ibuka’s creative thinking brought the world a brand new
product. Called the Walkman, his portable player
proved to be an instant best-seller and the fore-
runner to modern sound innovations like the
handy iPod.
Science is peppered with examples of sudden
connections like these. While they might seem
accidental, there’s usually more than just luck
involved. Behind the scenes, there’s a curious
and creative mind at work.

Hans Lipper shey – Ab out 160 0
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH
Many different stories have been told about the invention of
the telescope. The one about Hans Lippershey has never been
disproved and may well be true.
Lippershey was a maker of eyeglasses in Middelburg,
Holland. One day he was standing in the doorway of his shop
polishing some lenses he had just made. It was his custom to
hold the finished lenses up to the light. That way he could see
flaws in the glass more easily. Absent-mindedly, he held two
lenses up to the light instead of just one and looked through
both at the same time.
The church tower in the distance seemed to leap out at
him. Startled, Lippershey almost dropped the lenses. After
calming down, he held up the lenses and looked at the tower
again. Sure enough, the tower appeared to be close enough
to touch.
Lippershey noticed that he had used two different lenses.
The one closest to his eye was concave or curved inward on
one side. The lens closest to the tower was convex or curved
outward on one side. By moving the lenses closer or farther
apart, he could focus the image of the tower clearly.
At first, Hans Lippershey simply thought he had invented
an interesting toy. He mounted the lenses on a board so his
customers could view the church tower in the distance. Soon
the popularity of his invention grew and his business boomed.
102 Larry Verstraete

Eventually Lippershey refined his device. He enclosed the
lenses in an adjustable hollow tube. He called it his kijkglas
(“look glass”).
On October 2, 1608, Lippershey applied for a patent for his
“look glass” so that he would be the only person allowed to
produce and sell his invention. He was refused. The govern-
ment told him that his idea was not original enough for “too
many people have knowledge of this invention”.
It seems that other lens grinders in Holland had applied
for patents on similar inventions at about the same time as
Hans Lippershey.
Exactly who discovered this trick with the lenses – and how
it was discovered – may always be a mystery, but Lippershey’s
accident might well be the forerunner to the telescopes, bin-
oculars, and microscopes we use today.

DID YOU KNOW?
When Galileo Galilei read about Lippershey’s invention,
he created his own “look glass”. With the crude device,
he made a number of discoveries: sunspots on the
surface of the sun; the four large moons of Jupiter;
the rings of Saturn; and more than 100 new stars
in the Milky Way Galaxy. People of his time were
interested in more practical uses for the telescope,
however – like spotting incoming ships from a
position many blocks away from the harbor.

Luigi Galvani – 1786
TWITCHING LEGS
In a fairy tale, a frog might be a handsome prince in disguise.
In science, a frog just might lead to an important discovery.
Around the year 1786, an Italian university professor,
Luigi Galvani, was preparing to experiment with static elec-
tricity. Like other professors of his time, he used one of his
rooms at home as his laboratory. His pupils gathered there
for instruction.
One day Signora Galvani sat in the room to watch her
husband. To pass the time before class started, she prepared a
tasty meal of frog legs, a delicacy in Europe. Wielding a sharp
steel knife, Signora Galvani skinned and sliced dead frogs and
then laid the pieces on a zinc plate beside her.
When she was finished, Signora Galvani set the knife down
on the plate. She watched the students as they entertained
themselves by cranking a nearby electrostatic generator to
shower the room with sparks.
From the corner of her eye, Signora Galvani noticed move-
ment from the dish of legs. Astonished, she turned to watch
them closely. Sure enough, the legs twitched as if they were
still alive.
Intrigued, Signora Galvani continued watching and soon
noticed a pattern to the movements. Only those parts of the
legs that touched the knife blade resting on the edge of the
metal dish twitched. The twitching also seemed to happen

only when sparks were produced by the nearby electro-
static machine.
When her husband came home, she excitedly told him of
her discovery. Fascinated by the twitching reaction, Galvani
began a long series of experiments. He reasoned that if sparks
from an electrostatic machine caused twitching then light-
ning should have to same effect. To find out, he hung frog
legs from brass hooks on the iron railings that surrounded
his house.
One sunny day, a light breeze pushed the legs against
the iron railing. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky or a hint of
electricity, but the legs twitched anyway. Stumped, Galvani
moved indoors to conduct new tests under more controlled
conditions. He laid the frog legs on an iron plate and pressed
the brass hook against it. Again, the legs flinched.
Galvani knew that muscles in a frog’s leg twitched when
they came in contact with electricity. Now the twitching
happened even when electricity was nowhere nearby. Why?
Galvani thought there must be a natural source of electricity
inside the frogs. He called it “animal electricity”.
Later another Italian professor, Alessandro Volta, also
investigated the twitching. He found that when two different
metals – the zinc plate and steel knife in Galvani’s case – were
separated by a moist conductor like frog’s legs, electricity
was produced.
Galvani may have been wrong when he believed that
animals have a natural source of electricity, but his discov-
eries were valuable to others. They led to the invention of

the battery, a device that produces power when two metals,
usually copper and zinc, are separated by a moist mixture.

Ignaz Semmelweis – 1846
MYSTERIOUS DEATHS
In 1846, doctors at Vienna’s General Hospital in Austria were
faced with a puzzling problem. Why were so many mothers
and babies in the maternity ward dying of childbed fever?
And why was the death rate in one maternity ward many
times higher than in another?
The hospital served many women who were charity
cases. These women could not afford costly medical care. In
return for medical attention for themselves and their babies,
they agreed to be part of the training program for medical
students. Surprisingly, the death rate in the training ward
was ten times higher than in another ward where doctors
rarely visited and babies were delivered by women known
as midwives.
Determined to unravel the mystery of these strange deaths,
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis observed the wards and patients
closely. With other doctors, he carefully examined the dead
bodies in the hope of uncovering some clues.
One day there was an unfortunate accident. One of the
doctors cut his finger as he dissected a dead body. Even
though the cut was minor, the doctor soon felt ill. He devel-
oped a fever and in a few days died of blood poisoning.
Semmelweis noticed that the doctor’s symptoms were
suspiciously like those of patients who died of childbed fever.
Acting on a hunch, he watched the movements of the doctors
and students. An interesting pattern emerged.

Midwives who attended patients in the healthier ward
where doctors rarely visited, did not examine bodies in the
dissecting room. But doctors and students often went directly
from the dissecting room to the other maternity ward with
the higher death rate. None of them stopped to wash their
hands before going from one room to the other.
All at once, pieces of the puzzle began to fit together.
Semmelweis realized that doctors and students carried
infection from the dead bodies into the maternity ward. He
announced a new rule. From now on, patients, students, and
doctors had to wash and disinfect their hands.
Just as Semmelweis suspected, the death rate soon dropped
remarkably. Despite the success of his methods, other doctors
ridiculed him. They refused to believe that such a simple pro-
cedure could solve the problem. Disgraced, Semmelweis was
forced to leave Vienna. His rule was forgotten and again the
death rate climbed.
Years later, doctors around the world admitted that Ignaz
Semmelweis was right. Today hand washing is recognized as
one of the necessary steps in preventing the spread of disease.

DID YOU KNOW?
After having worked for years to prevent the
spread of childbed fever, Ignaz Semmelweis himself
suddenly caught it and died in 1865.

Ivan Pavlov – 19 01
MORE DROOL, PLEASE
At the Institute of Experimental Medicine in St. Petersburg,
Russia, physiologist Ivan Pavlov was studying the digestive
systems of dogs. In a series of carefully controlled experi-
ments, he hoped to answer several questions. How did the
amount of food eaten affect the quantity of saliva a dog pro-
duced? Did the type of food or the time it was served make
a difference?
Normally, the sight or smell of food caused the dogs’

salivary glands to swing into action, producing drool and
beginning the digestive process. But one day Pavlov noticed
something odd when an assistant entered the research area
wearing a white lab coat. One of the dogs began to salivate
even though the assistant wasn’t carrying food. The same
thing happened when an empty metal food cart was wheeled
into the room – slobber, even when there was no food around.
Pavlov believed that the dog had been conditioned to sali-
vate. Because assistants normally wore white coats during
feedings and wheeled carts into the room, the dog had uncon-
sciously learned to connect the sight of the coat and the clang

of the cart to food. In time, just the white coat or the cart
alone was enough to jumpstart the drooling process.
Pavlov set up a series of experiments where he paired food
with various sights or sounds. In one, he rang a bell just
before food was delivered. After a few tries, the sound of the
bell itself was enough to cause the dog to drool.
Intrigued by the response, Pavlov devoted the rest of his
life to studying conditioned learning. In 1904, the Noble
Prize for Medicine or Physiology was awarded to Ivan Pavlov
for his work on classical conditioning. His discovery laid the
groundwork for a whole new branch of science – psychology,
the study of human behavior.

Dogs played a part in another important discovery. In
1889, German scientists Joseph von Mering and Oscar
Minkowski removed the pancreas from a dog to study
how the dog’s digestive system worked without the
organ. Days later, a lab assistant noticed flies swarming
around a puddle of the dog’s urine. Curious, the
scientists tested the urine and found it contained high
concentrations of sugar. In time, scientists discovered
the reason. The pancreas secretes a substance – insulin
– that helps the body metabolize sugar. The discovery
was an important step to understanding diabetes and
finding ways to regulate the disease.

Clarence Birdseye – Ab out 1917
FRESH FROZEN
Between 1914 and 1917, Clarence Birdseye lived as a fur
trader in Labrador, Canada. Fresh food was not always avail-
able in the sub-zero climate, but Birdseye noticed that the
native Inuit rarely went hungry. After a fishing or hunting
expedition, they stored part of their catch outdoors. In the
cold, dry air, food froze quickly. Months later, as the need
arose, the Inuit thawed and cooked their frozen catch.
Probably hundreds of fur traders had observed this before,
but Clarence Birdseye was the first one to take it a step further.
He noticed that meat frozen on the coldest days tasted fresher
and more tender than meat frozen on milder days. To find out
why, he examined the meat under a microscope and compared
the cells of samples frozen at different temperatures.
Birdseye noticed an interesting pattern. On milder days,
when meat froze slowly, long thin ice needles developed that
punctured the cell walls. Later, when the meat was thawed,
the broken cell walls collapsed. Fluid seeped out, and the
food tasted soggy and bland. On very cold days, though, meat
froze so quickly that there wasn’t time for needle-like crys-
tals to form. When the meat thawed, the cell walls remained
unbroken. The food tasted fresh and firm.
Birdseye ran tests on other types of food. He soaked a few
cabbages in salt water and set them outside in the freezing
wind. The cabbages froze quickly, their cells unbroken by ice

crystals. When cooked, the vegetables retained their fresh-
picked flavor.
Now that he understood how freezing preserved meat and
vegetables, Birdseye tackled another problem. How could he
provide people living in warmer climates with tasty fresh-
frozen food?
When he returned to the United States in 1923, Birdseye
experimented with rabbit meat and fresh fillets in his own
kitchen. Later he worked in a refrigeration plant in New
Jersey. Eventually, he invented a freezing machine. In it, very
cold salt water was passed over metal plates that touched the
cartons of food, freezing them in minutes instead of hours.
By the end of the 1920s, Birdseye began selling packages of
his frozen foods. People soon discovered that the quick-frozen
food tasted as fresh as the day it was frozen.
The frozen food business made Clarence Birdseye a
wealthy man. His success must have given him the urge to
invent as well, for by the time he died in 1956 at the age of
seventy-three, he had over three hundred other inventions to
his credit.

Legend has it that maple syrup was discovered
accidentally when a woman used the sap from a maple
tree in place of water in a meal she was preparing. As

the food cooked, the sap boiled and thickened, adding a
sweet flavor to an ordinary meal.

Ar thur Fr y – 1974
A REMARKABLE FAILURE
Spencer Silver figured his experiment was a failure. So did
other scientists that worked for the Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing Company (3M) in 1970.
Silver tried to invent a new super-strong glue. Instead,
the batch he mixed was the opposite – super-weak. The glue
barely stuck, and it was so temporary that the two objects
could be peeled apart easily.
The glue was labeled a failure, shelved, and almost forgotten.
Then one Sunday four years later, another 3M scientist,
Arthur Fry, encountered a problem while singing in his
church choir. The bits of paper he used to mark his place in
the choir book often fell out. Fry kept losing his place, a frus-
trating experience.
“I don’t know if it was a dull sermon or divine inspiration,”
Fry said later, “but my mind began to wander and suddenly I
thought of an adhesive that had been discovered several years
earlier . . . ”
Fry remembered Spencer Silver’s seemingly useless glue.
Would that solve the problem? When he returned to work
the next day, Fry tested his idea. He spread the super-weak
glue on bits of paper and stuck them to the pages of his book.
The markers stayed in place but separated with little effort.
For nearly a year and a half, Fry perfected the glue, adjust-
ing the formula so that the markers peeled off without leaving
a residue. When he was ready, Fry passed out samples to

his co-workers at 3M. They weren’t impressed. No one was
sure why people would buy sticky note paper when ordinary
scratch paper sold for so much less.
In 1977, Post-It Notes, as the sticky pads were called, were
test-marketed in four cities. In two cities, sales were poor. In
the other two, sales were amazing. When 3M representatives
looked closer, they discovered the reason for the difference.
In the two cities with terrific sales, dealers had passed out
free samples. Once people had Post-Its in their hands, they
discovered many different uses for the sticky paper.
Today Post-Its can be found in homes and offices, in many
colors and designs, and on everything from refrigerators to
television screens, proving that even failures can be outstand-
ing successes given the right circumstances.

MO RE CLEVER
CONNE C TIONS
Jean- Francois Champ ollion (1799)

THE ROSETTA STONE
An engraved stone found embedded in an ancient wall near
the town of Rashid (Rosetta), Egypt, puzzled the French
soldiers in Napoleon’s army that found it. The stone was
inscribed in three different scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic
(native Egyptian), and Greek. Scholars who examined the
stone realized that each script seemed to repeat the same
message. Of the three scripts, though, only Greek was a living
language. The ability to decipher hieroglyphics and demotic
Egyptian had vanished a thousand years earlier.
Figuring that that the Greek script might serve as a
decoder for hieroglyphics, scholars tried to match it to the
symbols or ‘glyphs’ on the stone. Years of study finally led to
a breakthrough in 1822 when French scholar Jean-Francois
Champollion realized that glyphs represented sounds, not
words as others had assumed. By cracking the Rosetta stone,
Champollion gave historians a way of decoding thousands of
years of lost history.

D avid Parkinson (194 0)
GUN DIRECTOR
In the spring of 1940, engineer David Parkinson went to sleep
upset by news of the day. It was wartime and things were not
going well for the Allied forces. Thousands of soldiers had
just been killed by German planes in a major battle off the
coast of France.
During his sleep, Parkinson had a vivid and disturbing
dream. He was in a gun pit with Dutch soldiers who were
manning an anti-aircraft gun. Enemy planes screamed across
the sky. The soldiers fired shot after shot at the attack-
ing planes. With each shot, a plane plunged to the ground.
Puzzled by the gun’s accuracy, in the dream Parkinson moved
in for a closer look. That’s when he noticed a small round
device mounted on the gun.
Parkinson awoke with the dream still clear. He realized that
the round device was familiar to him. It was a potentiometer,
an instrument he had used at work to control the movement
of a machine called a strip recorder. Suddenly the dream took
on new meaning. Perhaps the potentiometer could be used to
control the movement of guns, too.
Parkinson’s dream led to the development of the gun direc-
tor, an invention that adjusted the aim of a gun by constantly
recalculating the target’s position. The gun director greatly
improved the accuracy of anti-aircraft guns and helped the
Allies turn defeat into victory.

Perc y Spencer (1945)
MICROWAVE OVEN
When Percy L. Spencer, a self-taught British engineer,
reached into his pocket for a chocolate bar after working on
a radar set at the Raytheon Manufacturing Company, he dis-
covered a gooey melted mess. Why? he wondered. The room
hadn’t been especially warm. On a hunch, he placed a few
popcorn kernels near the magnetron, the radar set’s power
tube. In no time, the kernels popped. The next morning,
Spencer brought a tea kettle to work. He cut a hole in the side
of the kettle, placed a raw egg inside, and aimed the kettle at
the magnetron. In seconds, the egg exploded, spewing bits of
shell and yolk around the lab. To Spencer the conclusion was
inescapable. The hidden source of energy that caused all of
these had to be the magnetron. Spencer’s observation led to
the development of one of the kitchen’s most popular items –
the microwave oven.
Jo cely n B ell & Anthony

Hewish (1967)
PULSARS
In July of 1967, Jocelyn Bell, an astronomy student at
Cambridge University in England detected what she called ‘a
bit of scruff ’ while analyzing the data generated by a radio
telescope. It was an unusually strange burst of energy that

appeared and disappeared in a steadily repeating pulse every
1.3 seconds. The signal was unlike anything Bell or her
advisor, Anthony Hewish, had noticed before.
Was an intelligent life form trying to send a
message? Half joking, they named the pul-
sating signal “Little Green Men”.
Puzzled, Bell and Hewish investigated. Bell
aimed the radio telescope at a completely differ-
ent patch of sky. Again she detected a similar pulse.
Then, over the Christmas holidays, she located
two more, each from a different region of the
sky, providing solid evidence that they had dis-
covered a new brand of star – the pulsar.
Katherine Pay ne (1984)

ELEPHANT COMMUNICATION
While observing three Asian elephants and their calves at
the Washington Park Zoo in Portland, Oregon, zoologist
Katherine Payne noticed something unusual. The air around
the elephant enclosure throbbed, sending a shudder through
Payne’s body. She recalled feeling the same sensation as a
young girl when she stood near a pipe organ at church and the
lowest notes on the organ were played. Were the elephants
sending messages by making sounds too low in frequency for
humans to detect?
Payne used electronic instruments to record the elephants.
Her ground-breaking investigation proved that elephants

communicate using hundreds of different calls, many of them
at frequencies well below the range of human hearing.

CHAPTER 6
SURPRISE
ENDINGS
123
Two hundred years ago John Spilsbury, a British teacher,
tried a new learning aid in his classroom. Many of his stu-
dents had difficulty remembering names and places on maps
so Spilsbury invented a device to help them. He glued a map
of England and Wales on to a thin piece of wood. Then he
cut the wood along county boundaries. By reassembling the
pieces, his students learned geography quickly.
Spilsbury thought his invention would be useful only in
classrooms, but others saw possibilities he didn’t. Colorful
pictures were substituted for the maps. These were glued onto
wafers of wood and then cut into odd-shaped pieces. People
had fun fitting the pieces together to make up the complete
picture. From John Spilsbury’s educational invention came
the jigsaw puzzle we still enjoy today.
As the stories in this chapter show, sometimes a person has

one idea in mind, but then fate steps in to twist and change it.
In the end a different product or plan emerges. Sometimes it’s
even better than the original.

Six teenth Centur y
A POISONOUS DRINK
The Indian was lost, or so a story from the sixteenth century
goes. Lost in the thick jungles of the high Andes in South
America. Worse still he was sick with malaria, a deadly
disease. Delirious with fever, he wandered for days. His head
ached. His swollen tongue filled his parched mouth. Water
was what he craved most – cool, refreshing water.
Miraculously, the man found it in a small stagnant pool
hidden among the trees. He ran to the edge, threw himself
on the ground, scooped up a handful of water, and gulped it
down. Immediately he gagged and spit it out. The water was
bitter tasting and clearly contaminated. A quick look around
explained why. Cinchona trees grew at the pond’s edge.
Their roots reached into the water. The bark of the cinchona
was poisonous, the man knew. Poison must have seeped into
the water.
The man’s thirst was so great that he didn’t care. He
choked down the foul-tasting water, drinking until he could
drink no more. Then he waited for the poison to take hold.
It never did. To the Indian’s great surprise, his fever passed
and he grew stronger – so strong that he was able to find his
way back to his village. There he told his friends and relatives
about the strange effects of the cinchona tree.
The news spread. When others who were sick with malaria
drank potions made from the bark of the tree, they were
cured, too. Eventually European missionaries heard about its

unusual powers. They brought its bark back to their own
countries and used it to cure thousands more.
The story of the Indian’s discovery has been told and retold
for hundreds of years. Many of its details fit facts that are
well known. Centuries ago, malaria was a deadly killer with
no known cure. Spread by mosquitoes, it struck young and
old, killing more people that all wars combined. Then in the
sixteenth century a miracle drug mysteriously surfaced from
the forests of South America. Quinine, a chemical found in the
bark of the cinchona tree – a tree which grew only in South
America – was found to lower the fever and cure the disease.
Did a sickly Indian really stumble upon
a cure by accident? Without written
records and actual proof, we have no
way of knowing for certain.

William Henr y Perkin – 1856
STICKY MESS,
VALUABLE SOLUTION
By all accounts, young William Henry Perkin was determined
and clever. Hardworking, too. During Easter holidays in 1856,
while others relaxed, the eighteen year-old chemistry student
spent his days and evenings in a small, simple laboratory in
his home in England. His goal was ambitious. From ordinary
coal tar, Perkin wanted to produce something valuable and
rare – quinine, the miracle drug that cured malaria.
Only one source of the drug existed. Quinine came from
the cinchona tree which grew in far-off South America.
Finding a cheap, practical way to produce quinine in a labora-
tory could save numerous lives and bring Perkin fame
and fortune.
To Perkin, success was just a test tube away. He set up a
series of experiments. He mixed coal tar with various
chemicals, but none of the mixtures came
close to having properties similar to
quinine. Despite his disappointment,
Perkin persisted. Each day he con-
tinued his experiments, varying
chemicals, times, temperatures, and
other factors in different attempts.
One day Perkin noticed a thick
black residue at the bottom of a test
tube. When he added alcohol to the

sticky mess, it dissolved and a deep purple liquid appeared.
Excited by the exotic color, Perkin abandoned his search for
quinine. Instead, he tested the brilliant fluid.
At this time, the only dyes available were those that came
from minerals, berries, flowers, and other natural sources.
Perkin saw promise in the strange purple fluid. Here was
a new hue that could be produced at will in a laboratory
by combining common chemicals. Perkin named his lucky
find mauve.
Perkin was fortunate in another way. By coincidence, a
fashion trend for purple dresses had been started in Europe
by Empress Eugenie of France. Perkin was just the man to
supply large amounts of the new synthetic dye. He persuaded
his father and brother to help him, and in a few months their
factory was churning out great quantities of the artificial
mauve color.
Was Perkin’s success just a bit of luck? Not entirely. If
William Henry Perkin hadn’t been curious enough to stop for
a second look at the black residue in the test tube, he would
have overlooked his great discovery. As it was, his interest led
to sweeping changes in the dye industry. Now colors could
be obtained in greater variety, more cheaply and easily than
ever before.

In 1973, chemist Patsy Sherman accidentally spilled
a chemical mixture on her shoe. The spot remained
clean even when the rest of the shoe got dirty. The
accident led to the development of Scotchgard, a stain-
resistant mixture used to protect carpets, upholstery,
and clothing.

Levi Straus s & Jacob D avis – 1873
PANTS NOT TENTS
In 1849, Levi Strauss, a young German-born salesman,
packed up his wares, boarded a clipper ship in New York, and
headed for California by way of Cape Horn in South America.
Throughout the voyage, Strauss peddled his goods to fellow
passengers. By the time the ship reached San Francisco,
he had a pocketful of money and only a few rolls of canvas
left unsold.
Strauss expected to sell the canvas for use as tents and
wagon covers. But mining prospectors already had tents.
Their pants had worn out, however, so it was pants that
they wanted.
Strauss hired a tailor to fashion pants out of his leftover
canvas. They sold in a flash. Almost overnight, other pros-
pectors wanted Strauss’s durable trousers so he opened a
small manufacturing shop in San Francisco and began mass
production. Later he switched from canvas to denim, a softer
yet stronger material. To ensure that each piece of denim
matched the others, he dyed them indigo blue. People started
calling the pants “blue denims” and then eventually “blue
jeans” (for Genoa, a city in Italy where a denim-like material
was made).
The copper rivets that adorn Levi jeans came later after a
brawny customer kept ripping the pockets and seams of his
pants. Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, reinforced the
weakest points with rivets. The riveted pants were so popular

that Davis partnered with Levis Strauss to apply for a patent
to protect the product. The day they received the patent –
May 20, 1873 – is considered by many to be the official birth-
day of blue jeans.
DID YOU KNOW?

A truck driver, making a road stop in 1998, discovered
a box of clothes abandoned in a rickety shack in
Nevada. Among the items inside – a grimy, tattered
pair of jeans from the 1880s. Auctioned on eBay as
the oldest Levis ever, they were purchased by Levi
Strauss & Company for a cool $46,532.

Ar thur Scot t – 19 07
TOO THICK, TOO HEAVY
In the early 1900s, the Scott Paper Company produced
bathroom tissue and other paper products. To make tissue,
the company ordered huge rolls of lightweight, absorbent
paper from a paper mill. One day in 1907, someone at the
mill goofed. Instead of the regular rolls, a large shipment
of heavier-than-normal paper arrived at the Scott factory. It
was too thick, too heavy, and too wrinkled to be used as bath-
room tissue.
No one in the company knew what to do with the paper.
Someone suggested sending it back. But Arthur Scott, head
of the company, thought of something else. Why not perfo-
rate the thick tissue? Make it so that the paper tore off into
towel-sized sheets then sell them as disposable hand towels.
Scott called the product Sani-Towels. At first, they were
sold only to hotels, restaurants, and other places that had
public rest rooms, but the towels proved so convenient and
popular that in 1931 the company started manufacturing Scot
Towels, a 200 sheet home version.
Today dozens of different brands of paper towels line
supermarket shelves, each one ready to wipe, blot, dust, or
polish just about anything.

In 1938, chemist Ray Plunkett was experimenting with
new refrigerator coolants when he unexpectedly
produced something else – a mysterious white powder.
The stuff turned out to be the slipperiest substance on
earth: Teflon.

Lonnie Johnson – 1982
UNEXPECTED SPLASH
Lonnie Johnson was famous. Not just because he was an engi-
neer who helped design three space probes for NASA. Not
even because he held nearly forty patents on such practical
inventions as thermostats and hair dryers.
No, much of Lonnie Johnson’s fame came from a very dif-
ferent gadget. Carried by children and child-like adults alike,
his best-known invention can hit a moving target at fifty
paces with great accuracy, spraying refreshing relief on a hot
summer’s day.
In 1982, Johnson was developing an environmentally
friendly heat pump for refrigerators, one that circulated water
through tubes instead of relying on harsh chemicals. Armed
with bits of plastic tubing and other spare parts, Johnson sta-
tioned himself in his bathroom to test his idea. He attached
tubing to the faucet on the bathroom sink, rigged a homemade
nozzle to the end, and turned on the tap. A stream of water
shot across the room, hitting the shower curtains around the
bathtub, blasting them back with surprising force.
The water traveled farther and faster than Johnson had
imagined. “I knew it would make a neat water gun,” he
said later.
In his workshop, Johnson built a model. Using plastic pipes,
Plexiglas, and an empty plastic beverage bottle as a storage
tank for water, he constructed a rifle-like water shooter. Then
he asked his six year-old daughter to test it out on their

neighbors. The girl was happy to try it – what kid wouldn’t
be? – and the neighbors got totally soaked. Everyone agreed.
The water gun was great fun.
It took almost four years for Johnson to receive a patent

for the invention, and it wasn’t until 1990 that the first Super
Soaker hit the market place. Well over a billion dollars worth
of Super Soakers have been sold since, making Johnson’s
bathroom surprise one of the best-selling toys of all time.

Michael Zaslof f – 1986
THE FULLY RECOVERED FROG
For his research on genetic diseases, Michael Zasloff, an
American scientist, operated on frogs to remove tissue
samples that he would examine later. Usually, the operation
was minor. Zasloff stitched up the frogs, returned them to the
tank in a corner of his laboratory, and most of the time, the
frogs recovered.
In the summer of 1986, Zasloff removed tissue from an
African clawed frog. A few days later, he glanced into the
murky waters of the tank to check on the frog’s condition.
The waters teemed with bacteria, a condition that could lead
to infection. Zasloff half expected the frog to be dead, or at
the very least sick. Instead, it was surprisingly active.
At first, Zasloff wondered if he had the wrong frog. He
looked for the surgical wound. There it was in the frog’s side,
but instead of a red festering sore, the wound was small and
almost healed.
Zasloff realized that he was observing a miracle. The frog
had made a surprising recovery. Something must be protect-
ing it from infection. But what?
Zasloff abandoned his earlier research and turned his
attention to the frog. Eventually, he discovered the reason for
the frog’s unexpected good health. Special infection-fighting
chemicals known as magainins were produced in the frog’s
skin glands.

Research is on-going, but we now know that the African
clawed frog isn’t the only frog species to produce magainins.
Each species of frog produces a slightly different form, and
with 5400 different frog species in the world, a whole army
of disease-fighting chemicals might be lurking in ponds and
lakes around the globe.

MO RE SURP RISE
END INGS
George Cr um (1853)
POTATO CHIPS
George Crum had no intention of inventing a tasty new food
snack. Revenge was what he really wanted. Crum was the chef
at the Moon Lake Lodge in New York. One day a dissatisfied
customer complained several times that Crum’s french fries
were not as thin, salty, or crisp as they should be. Unhappy
about the complaints, Crum tried to get even. He made the
potato slices so thin, salty, and crisp that he was sure the cus-
tomer would hate them. To his surprise, the customer loved
the dish. In his pursuit for revenge, George Crum created one
of our favorite foods – the potato chip.
Joshua L. Cowan &

Conrad Huber t (19 0 0)
FLASHLIGHT
Joshua Cowen figured he had a whopper of an idea. Slip bat-
teries into a slim metal tube, attach a light bulb to one end,
stick the tube into a flowerpot, and place the pot on restaurant

tables to create an instant centerpiece. The illuminated flower
pot centerpiece never really caught on, and when Cowen ran
into financial difficulties, he signed the rights over to busi-
nessman Conrad Hubert. Hubert saw new possibilities for
Cowen’s light-stick invention. He repurposed the light-stick,
started the American Eveready Company, and sold millions of
hand-held ‘flashlights’ and the batteries that powered them.
Charles M enches (19 0 4)

ICE CREAM CONE
From his booth at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, Charles
Menches sold assorted flavors of ice cream in dishes. Next to
him, Ernest Hamwi sold a tasty Middle Eastern waffle-like
pastry called zalabia.
August was hot, and Menches did a booming business
selling ice cream. One scorching day, he sold so much ice
cream that by noon he had run out of dishes. Without more
dishes, he would be forced to close his booth. He glanced at
his neighbor. Hamwi still had lots of zalabia left.
With Hamwi’s help, Menches rolled the thin pastry into
a cone shape, scooped ice cream on top, and passed it to his
customers. They loved the combination of cool and crisp
sensations, and Menches’ ice cream cone was the hit of
the exposition.
In 1912, Frederick A. Bruckman, an inventor from
Portland, Oregon, created a machine that made pastry and

folded it into cones. By 1920, one-third of all ice cream being
consumed in the United States was eaten from cones.
James Wright (1945)

SILLY PUTTY
James Wright, an engineer working for General Electric, set
out to find a way of making synthetic rubber by combining
different chemicals. One of his mixtures – boric acid with
silicone oil – ended up being sticky goop with strange prop-
erties. The stuff was soft enough to roll and shape, but also
springy enough to bounce and stretch. The new compound
was a poor substitute for rubber, but great fun to twist, mold,
and toss. Eventually, it was sold in plastic egg-like containers
as a children’s toy. The playful substance – Silly Putty – was
unbelievably popular when it first hit stores, and it continues
to sell well today.
Nor man Lar son (1952)

WD-40
When an airplane manufacturer discovered that its planes
were beginning to rust, it called upon Rocket Chemical, a
small lubricant company, for help. On his fortieth try, head
chemist Norman Larson found a formula that seemed to
work. When sprayed on the planes, the product repelled

water, coated metal, and protected parts from rust. Larson
called it WD-40 (the WD standing for “water displacement”).
Workmen at the airport discovered the stuff could be used
on more than just airplanes. They claimed it fixed squeaks,
loosened sticky parts, removed crayon smudges, dislodged
gum from carpets, and did a host of other things. Rocket
Chemical received so many orders for the wonder product
that the company started selling WD-40 to the public. Today
the WD-40 Company – the new name for Rocket Chemical –
sells millions of dollars of the lubricant each year, and keeps
an ever-expanding list of more than 2000 uses for its product
on the ‘Cool Stuff ’ section of its www.wd40.com website.

The ice cream sundae was invented in 1890 when a
Wisconsin merchant faced a shortage of ice cream.
To stretch his supply, he reduced the ice cream in each
serving. To make up the difference, he added chocolate
sauce and toppings.

GLOSSA RY
accelerate – to move faster; to speed up

antibiotics – drugs used to kill harmful bacteria and
cure infection
archives – a place which holds public records or
historical documents
bacteriology – the scientific study of bacteria
behavioral psychologist – a person who studies the
causes and effects of human behavior
cathode rays – high speed electrons emitted from a heated
cathode ray tube
celluloid – a tough, flammable type of plastic
collodion – a syrupy, highly flammable solution used as an
adhesive to close small wounds, hold surgical dressings,
and for making photographic plates
concave – curved inwards; having a shape like the inside of
a bowl
conductor – a material or device that transmits heat,
electricity, or sound
contagious – infection or disease capable of being spread
by contact between people
control group – in a test or experiment, a group that does
not receive change and is being compared to a group that
does receive change

convex – curved outwards; having a shape like the outside
of a bowl
culture dish – a flat transparent dish used chiefly for
growing microorganisms.
density – a measure of the compactness of a substance; the
denser an object the greater its mass per unit volume.
electrostatic generator – a device that produces high
voltage with a build-up of static electricity
extraction – the action of taking out something. Example:
the dentist extracted a tooth
grafting – to join a shoot or bud with a growing plant by
inserting it into the stem or another part of the plant.
immune – resistant to a particular infection or disease
implant – a device or material surgically placed in the body
to replace or repair a malfunctioning part. Example: an
implantable pacemaker
Leyden jar – a device that stores static electricity between
two electrodes on the inside of a glass jar
magainins – chemicals acquired from the skins of frogs
that have disease-fighting properties
midwife – a person trained to assist women in childbirth
nicotine – a toxic, oily liquid found in tobacco
nitroglycerine – a thick, pale yellow, unstable liquid that is
explosive when jarred or heated suddenly
pacemaker – an artificial device for stimulating the heart
muscle and regulating its contractions

paleoanthropology – the study of the origins the
human species
pendulum – a weight suspended from a fixed support so
that it can swing freely back and forth
potentiometer – a device that is used to control and adjust
voltages in radios and TV sets
prototype – an early test sample or model of a future product
quinine – a bitter substance derived from the bark of the
cinchona tree and used to treat malaria
radiation – energy transmitted in waves or a stream of
particles. Light, heat, and sound are types of radiation
refractometer – an instrument used to measure the degree
of bending a ray of light experiences as it passes from one
medium such as air and into another medium such as glass
scientific method – a way of problem-solving that involves
gathering data under carefully controlled conditions in
order to analyze it and formulate conclusions
stethoscope – a medical instrument for listening to
someone’s working heart or lungs
transistor – a tiny electronic device that is used to control
the flow of electricity in radios, computers, etc
vaccine – a preparation of weakened or killed bacteria that,
when introduced into the body, makes a person less likely
to catch a disease
vulcanized rubber – rubber that has been treated with
sulfur and heat to give it greater durability, strength,
and flexibility

FO R FURTH ER REA D ING
D’Estaing, Valerie-Anne Giscard. The World Almanac Book of

Inventions. World Almanac Publications, 1985.
Flatow, Ira. They All Laughed . . . From Light Bulbs to
Lasers: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions
That Have Changed Our Lives. New York: Harper
Perennial, 1993
Goldsmith, Mike. Eureka!: The Most Amazing Scientific
Discoveries Of All Time. Thames & Hudson, 2014.
Krois, Birgit. Accidental Inventions: The Chance Discoveries That
Changed Our Lives. Insight Editions, 2012
Orzel, Chad. Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist. Basic
Books, 2014.
Roberts, Royston. Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1989
TIME 100 New Scientific Discoveries: Fascinating, Unbelievable,
and Mind Expanding Stories. Time, 2011.

The following brand names, registered trademarks or pat-
ented names have been used in this book:
Aspartame
Birdseye
Dubble Bubble
DuPont
Harbitol
iPod
Ivory Soap Kellogg
Kevlar
Kodak
Levis
Lifesavers
Milk Duds
Plexiglas
Popsicle
Post-It Note
Sani-Towels
Scotchgard
Scot Towels
Silly Putty
Slinky
Super Soaker
Teflon
Velcro
Walkman
WD-40

INDEX
A C
acceleration 11 cathode ray tube 85

acetylene 98 cell phone 25
aluminum 97 cell phone camera 72
Anning, Mary 56 celluloid 41
Archimedes 6, 7, 8 cereal flakes 82
Aspartame 13 Champollion, Jean-Francois 117
Charon 43
B childbed fever 108, 110
cholera 78, 80
bacteriology 13 Christy, James 42, 43
battery 107 cinchona tree 126
Beaumont, William 57, 59 classical conditioning 112
Becquerel, Henri 88, 89 cold drawing 94
Bell, Alexander Graham 97 collodion 39, 41
Bell, Jocelyn 119 Cooley, Samuel 36
Benedictus, Edouard 40, 41 Cooper, Martin 24
benzene 22 Coover, Harry xi
Birdseye, Clarence 113, 114 COSTAR 20, 21
blasting gelatin 39 Cowen, Joshua 139
blue jeans 131 Crane, Clarence 16
brain function 64, 65, 66 Crocker, James 19, 20

D Fry, Arthur 115
Daguerre, Louis 96 G
de Mestral, George 23
density 8 Gage, Phineas 64, 65, 66
diabetes 112 Galilei, Galileo 9, 11, 104
Diemer, Walter 84 Galileo. See Galilei, Galileo
digestion, process of 58 Galvani, Luigi 105, 106
Dubble Bubble 84 Goldman, Sylvan 17
dye, mauve 129 Goodyear, Charles 33, 35
dynamite 38, 39 grafting 61
Greatbatch, Wilson 49
E Grimes, William 71
gun director 118
Eastman, George 70 gunpowder 46
Edison, Thomas 48
electrostatic generator 30, 32, 76, 105 H
elephant ommunication 120
Endo, Ichiro 50 hair pillows 25
Epperson, Frank 14 Hamwi, Ernest 140
Etscorn, Frank 44, 45 Hargreaves, James 48
Hewish, Anthony 120
F Hill, Jillian 93, 94
Howe, Elias Jr. 69
Fife, David 62, 63 Hubble Space Telescope 19, 21
flashlight 140 Hubert, Conrad 140
Fleming, Alexander 90, 92 hygiene, hospital 109
Franklin, Benjamin 47
frozen foods 113, 114

I L
Ibuka, Masaru 101 Laennec, Rene 55, 56

ice cream Larson, Norman 141
bar 70 laughing gas 36
cone 140 Leyden jar 31, 76
sundae 142 Lifesaver 16
Ichthyosaur 56 lightning rod 47
inkjet printer 50 Lippershey, Hans 102, 104
insulin 112 Lucy 68
J M
James, Richard and Betty 23 magainins 137

Jansky, Karl 43 magnetron 119
Jenner, Edward 81 maple syrup 114
jigsaw puzzle 125 McCrory, Phil 25
Johanson, Donald 67, 68 McIntosh, John and Allan 60, 61
Johnson, Lonnie 135, 136 McIntosh Red 60, 61
Menches, Charles 140
K microwave oven 119
midwives 108
Kahn, Philippe 72 Milk Duds 16
Kekulé, Friedrich 22 Minkowski, Oscar 112
Kellogg, John and Will 82 Morse, Samuel 53, 54
Kevlar 95 musical ratios 5
Klowek, Stephanie 95
Koch, Robert 12, 13
Kodak xi, 70

N Pythagoras 4, 5
Neanderthals 68 Q
Nelson, Christian 70
nicotine patch 45 quinine 127, 128
nitroglycerine 38, 39
nitrous oxide 36, 37 R
Nobel, Alfred 38, 39
Nobel Prize 39, 92 radiation 85, 86, 88, 89
nutrition 59 Red Fife 63
nylon 94 Roentgen, Wilhelm 85, 87
Rosetta Stone 117
P rubber, vulcanized 34
pacemaker 49 S
Parkinson, David 118
Pasteur, Louis 78, 81 Saccharin 13
Pavlov, Ivan 111, 112 safety glass 41
Payne, Katherine 120 Sani-Towels 133
pendulum, principle of 9, 10, 11 Schlatter, James 13
penicillin 92 Schwartz, Berthold 46
Perkin, William Henry 128, 129 scientific method 11
photography 70, 96 Scotchgard 130
Plunkett, Ray 134 Scott, Arthur 133
Pluto 42, 43 security scanner 87
Popsicle 14, 15 Semmelweis, Ignaz 108, 109, 110
Post-It Notes 116 serendipity xii
potentiometer 118 sewing machine 69
pulsar 120 Sherman, Patsy 130

shopping cart 17 W
Silly Putty 141
Silver, Spencer 115 Walkman 101
Slinky 23 WD-40 142
sound-recording 49 welding, electric 77
Spencer, Percy L. 119 Wells, Horace 36, 37
Spilsbury, John 125 Willson, Thomas L. 97
spinning jenny 48 Wright, James 141
stethoscope 56
St. Martin, Alexis 57, 58, 59 X
Strauss, Levi 131
sunscreen 26 X-rays 87
Super Soaker 136
Teflon 134
telegraph 54
telephone 97
Temple of Mithras 71
Thomson, Elihu 76, 77
vaccines 80, 81
van Muschenbroeck, Pieter 30, 31
Velcro 24
von Mering, Joseph 112

Accidental Discoveries - From Laughing Gas To Dynamite

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Accidental Discoveries - From Laughing Gas To Dynamite

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ACCIDENTAL

From Laughing Gas to Dynamite

Copyright © 2016 by Larry Verstraete

All rights reserved.

1. Science, Experiments & Projects

Distributed to the trade by The Ingram Book Company

And to the memory of my parents, George and Paula

vii O t h e r Bo o k s by L a rry Vers traete

147 Fo r F urt her Re a ding

“Dinosaurs” of the Deep: Discover Prehistoric Marine Life,

xii Larry Verstraete

What triggers the brainstorm that leads to a scientific dis-

xiv Larry Verstraete

• You find a chunk of food that’s been lying

• You fill a basin with water. Then you

• After a hike in the woods, you discover

• A bookmark falls out of a book you are reading, and you

It’s likely you’ve had at least one of these experiences.

In this chapter, each of these perfectly ordinary events

DID YOU KNOW?

in thought. When Syracuse was finally conquered

by Roman troops, a soldier was sent to arrest him.

The soldier found the old man sitting on the floor,

solving mathematical problems. When asked to

surrender, Archimedes refused, saying that he was

too busy with his work. The angry soldier drew

his sword and killed Archimedes on the spot.

10 Larry Verstraete

12 Larry Verstraete

MORE ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERIES

Schlatter, a chemist, spilled some powder onto his

fingers. When he licked his fingers to pick up a sheet of

paper, he noticed a strong sweet taste. The accident led

to the discovery of aspartame, an artificial sweetener.

14 Larry Verstraete

Epperson’s own children. They nicknamed the ice treat

“Pop’s Cycles”. When the Great Depression hit North

America in the 1920s, people couldn’t afford treats

like Popsicles. To combat slipping sales, Epperson

introduced the Twin Popsicle – two popsicles frozen

together in one package. For a nickel, a kid could

buy a double-sized treat and share it with a friend.

Originally Epperson froze each Popsicle separately

in large test tubes, a process which took several

hours. With modern equipment, it now takes

Lifesavers – The candy’s distinctive hole-in-the-middle

shape came about when Clarence A. Crane, its creator,

hired someone to mass-produce a flat, round candy.

Instead, the machine malfunctioned and punched a hole

in the center. Crane liked the unexpected effect and gave

the candy its well-known name.

Milk Duds – In 1926, when Chicago candy manufacturer

E. Hoffman & Company tried to develop a perfectly

round, chocolate-covered caramel, the machine spit

out lopsided balls instead. The mangled milk chocolate

‘duds’ tasted so great that the company continued

production. The deformed candy was marketed under the

name Milk Duds.

16 Larry Verstraete