CHANCE, SIMPLE INSPIRATION OR STUBBORNNESS?
Products Created For Other Purposes? Kleenex, Coca-Cola, And 8 More!
Published on October 6, 2024
Credit: Isaac Weatherly
It seems that the inventors listed in this article took to heart the famous phrase of French chemist Antoine Lavoisier "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed". Many of them were working on other things when chance had it that their creations found a different meaning.
Far from just discarding their research, they —or other visionaries later— used these technological advances to develop products we still use to this day. Did you know that the pacemaker, Coca-Cola, and the corkscrew originally had totally different purposes? Keep reading to discover the origin of these and 7 other inventions that came about while we were busy making other plans.
Pacemaker
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Today, the pacemaker saves thousands of lives, but it was originally designed for a whole other purpose. Wilson Greatbatch was a prolific American inventor who held more than 300 patents. In 1956 he was working on an audio recorder that was meant to be placed in the heart to record its sounds. However, as he was building it, he misplaced a resistor. This caused his device to produce a pulse that would sync with the heartbeat instead of recording sounds.
Greatbatch realized that his invention was of little use as a sound recorder, yet it could be used to monitor the rhythm of a sick heart. He presented it to surgeon William Chardack in 1958, who, after testing it on dogs, developed the first pacemaker to be implanted in a human being in 1960.
Kleenex
Credit: Kelly Sikkema
Have you noticed how Kleenex has gone from being a brand name to a generic term for any disposable tissue? These super-thin, soft paper rectangles are now a synonym for sniffles and sneezes. Even Oxford included the word in its dictionary! However, that was not what Kimberly-Clark, the company that originally created them, had in mind when it launched them in 1924.
Initially, the company promoted Kleenex as a skincare product, for cleansing makeup. Nevertheless, they soon began to receive letters from customers suggesting another type of application: they could be useful to alleviate the effects of colds and the flu. Finally, in 1930, the tissues were relaunched on the market with the slogan "Don't Carry a Cold in Your Pocket".
Bubble Wrap
Credit: Ron Lach
Whether it's to relieve tension or to secure a delicate object during a house move, we've all had bubble wrap in our homes at one time or another. Bubble wrap was invented by engineers Alfred W. Fielding and Marc Chavannes in 1957, but their original idea was very different from the use we give it today. What these two inventors really wanted was to create textured wallpaper.
At that time, wallpaper was very popular and they thought their concept would be a success, although it was far from it. Two years later, Frederick W. Bowers, a salesman promoting the failing bubble wrap, heard that IBM was looking for a way to pack their brand new, huge IBM 1401 computer to ship to their customers. Immediately, Bowers saw his opportunity and bubble wrap became the go-to packaging system for the tech pioneer and all the products to come.
Listerine
Credit: Mishaal Zahed
Nowadays, Listerine is one of the best-selling mouthwashes in the world. However, when the American chemist and doctor Joseph Lawrence, inspired by the research of Sir Joseph Lister, formulated the product in 1879, he did not imagine that it would end up being in the bathrooms of so many households.
Listerine was originally created as a surgical antiseptic and as a cure for gonorrhea. In 1888 an article recommended its application on sweaty feet to treat fungus. In the following years, it was marketed as a cure for colds, an additive for cigarettes, and a remedy for dandruff. It was not until the 1920s that the brand found its niche in the market: the battle against bad breath.
Super Glue
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The popular fast-drying adhesive known as Super Glue was invented by American engineer Harry Coover in 1942. Coover was working for the Kodak photographic company and was looking for a plastic material that would be highly translucent. He ended up inventing cyanoacrylate, a very promising compound but not quite adequate for what he needed.
This new material had a surprising property: it was liquid and sticky and, in contact with air, it solidified quickly. Coover perfected his invention for a while, but its first commercial use came several years later, during the Vietnam War: it was used to glue soldiers' bones together when fractures occurred. Eventually, the health authorities banned super glue as a sanitary product, although they did allow its domestic use to repair broken things.
Coca-Cola
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What is now the world's most famous soft drink was actually born as a substitute for morphine, and was later sold as a cure for various ailments: headaches, nerves, indigestion, and even impotence. Little did its creator suspect that, a century later, his invention would be known worldwide.
John Pemberton, a pharmacist and veteran of the American Civil War, had become addicted to morphine, a drug he took to relieve the pain caused by the wounds he had received. Concerned about his addiction, he started looking for an alternative. Thus, he created an alcoholic beverage infused with coca leaves that he called Pemberton's French Wine Coca. He began selling it in his drugstore for 5 cents a glass. When in 1886 the state of Atlanta passed a law restricting the sale of any alcohol, Pemberton developed Coca-Cola, which was basically a non-alcoholic version of his earlier invention.
Microsoft’s Solitaire and Minesweeper
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Microsoft Solitaire, along with Minesweeper, are considered the two most played games in history. They were installed by default in the Windows operating system, and it is estimated that more than 1 billion people have played them at some time. One might think that these games were intended as a pastime for users, but that was not the case.
Microsoft developed Solitaire and Minesweeper not as video games, but as learning tools. They were created with the sole purpose of teaching users how to operate the mouse. Before Windows, operating systems were based on typed commands. Along with the new OS, the mouse was introduced, and although it may sound bizarre today, at that time few people knew how to use it. These games required continuously moving the mouse all over the screen and doing a lot of precise clicking. So now you know, all those hours you spent playing were actually learning a new skill!
Cordless vacuum cleaner
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NASA has given mankind numerous cool inventions, from smoke detectors to running shoes. Perhaps one of the most curious, however, is the cordless vacuum cleaner. And no, they were not invented to clean out the dust from spaceships!
In fact, NASA needed a gadget capable of extracting samples from the surface of the Moon, without the astronauts having to bend down all the time —let's face it, their suits aren't the most flexible. So they contacted Black & Decker engineers, who, after some research, produced a handheld vacuum cleaner that worked without wires. Years later, the company used this same technology to manufacture the DustBuster, the first commercial cordless vacuum cleaner, launched in 1979.
Corkscrew
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What would be of dinner parties without a corkscrew? This small object has become essential to enjoy a good bottle of wine among friends. But in its beginnings, the corkscrew had a very different use than today. Its origins date back to the 17th century and have a military background.
A 1795 patent indicated they were used for extracting bullets that got stuck inside muskets. And also —why not?— to extract bullets from inside a wound, when they were deeply embedded in the bone or the muscle. It was not until the 18th century when cork stoppers began to be used in wine bottles, that the corkscrew acquired the use it has maintained for more than 200 years.
Tactile Writing System
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It is well known that nowadays blind people use Braille to read. Yet, this system was inspired by another language created some years earlier. In 1815, French army captain Charles Barbier invented the night language, a written alphabet intended to be read with the fingers, completely in the dark. It was actually developed for spies so that they could read coded messages in the middle of the night without being detected by the enemy.
Years later, after completing his military work, it occurred to Charles Barbier that his Alphabet could be used by the blind. But it was not until 1824 that Louis Braille, a 15-year-old who had lost his sight after a childhood accident, developed the tactile writing system that to this day is used by blind people all around the world.
