What happens if you don’t wash your hands and then you eat dinner? You discover that your food actually tastes better, that’s what. That’s how Constantin Fahlberg discovered the sweetener Saccharin.
Or how about the invention of the pacemaker? Wilson Greatbatch, an American Engineer, was trying to create a circuit that could record fast heart sounds.
But instead of grabbing a 10,000-ohm resistor, he accidentally picked up a 1-megaohm one, which pulsed for 1.8 milliseconds and stopped for one second; just like a normal heartbeat.
Check out this great article over at Discovery.com listing the Top 10 Accidental Inventions for more.