Accidental Inventions That Changed the World Necessity isnt always the mother of invention. Lots of the things we rely on to cure our diseases, cook our meals, and sweeten our days werent deliberately designed. Instead, they were a happy accident. Read on to see how society-shaping inventions -- from Coca-Cola to penicillin and the microwave oven -- came about by chance. Alyson Kreuger contributed additional research to this article. 1. Penicillin 13 Accidental Inventions That Changed the World Inventor: Sir Alexander Fleming, a scientist. What he was trying to make: Ironically, Fleming was searching for a wonder drug that could cure diseases. However, it wasnt until Fleming threw away his experiments that he found what he was looking for. How it was created: One day in 1928, Fleming noticed that a contaminated Petri dish he had discarded contained a mold that was dissolving all the bacteria around it. When he grew the mold by itself, he learned that it contained a powerful antibiotic -- penicillin -- used to treat ailments ranging from syphilis to tonsillitis. Thanks to penicillin and other antibiotics, the rate of death due to infectious disease is now one-twentieth of what it was back in 1900.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 10:34:18 +0000