11 Accidental Discoveries: Potato Chips, Plastic, and More

They say necessity is the mother of invention; sometimes luck also has a lot to do with it. Here’s a look at 11 objects we commonly use that people with the wisdom to follow up on accidental discoveries brought to the public. 

11. Potato Chips

George Crum was a renowned chef at Moon’s Lake House hotel near Saratoga Springs, NY, in the 19th century. In 1853, he had a diner complain that his potatoes were soggy and bland; the diner requested a new batch. 

Crum was offended and decided to play a prank on the diner by slicing the potatoes really thin and frying them until they were so hard a fork could break them into pieces. To counter the bland claim, he also over-spiced them. The diner loved it and the prank yielded a new invention. The hotel became famous for its specialty dish—potato chips. 

 10. Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ruth Graves Wakefield and her husband Kenneth Wakefield owned a Toll House Inn in Massachusetts in the first half of the 20th century. Ruth’s cookies were a favorite among her guests, so when she ran out of baker’s chocolate for her butter drop cookies one day in 1930 she didn’t want to disappoint and she instead improvised. She used chunks of Andrew Nestlé semisweet chocolate instead, thinking the chocolate would melt and spread through the cookies. Instead, she ended up with cookies that had chocolate chunks in them.  

Her chocolate chip cookies became famous all over New England. She made a deal with Andrew Nestlé: her recipe was printed on every semisweet chocolate bar in return for a lifetime supply of semisweet Nestlé chocolate bars. 

9. X-Ray

In the late 19th century, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen was performing experiments to trace the  path of electrical rays passing from an induction coil through a partially evacuated glass tube. He covered the tube so no light would escape, but noticed an object in the room was nonetheless illuminated. He realized a projected image of his own hand showed his bones. 

8. Teflon

In 1938, chemist Roy Plunkett and his assistant Jack Rebok were trying to create a better refrigerator using the gas tetrafluoroethylene. They stored a sample of the gas in a freezer overnight and found the next morning it had become a white, waxy solid. Plunkett found the material to be heat and acid resistant, and he also noted its nonstick characteristic. He patented the material as Teflon.

7. Plastic

Leo Baekeland was trying to find a replacement for shellac, a resin secreted by a South Asian scale bug. Using phenol and formaldehyde, he created Bakelite in 1907. He noticed that by heating the material it became a goo that could be molded. It was the first plastic, and it’s use became wide and varied—costume jewelry, buttons, knife handles, and much more. 

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