When Coca-Cola was first invented, it was just a potion for refreshing, relieving fatigue and treating headaches. 1885, American pharmacist john pemberton extracted a substance called cocaine from the leaves (coca) and tree seeds (cola) of the coca bush. After repeated experiments, a dark green potion (without gas, it needs to be drunk with cold water) for treating headache was prepared.
However, in 1886, john pemberton's assistant mistakenly poured soda into the potion, only to find that it tasted better! In this way, the world's first bottle of Coca Cola was born! For the sake of beauty, john pemberton also dyed the medicine brown.
Later, partner Robinson got the inspiration of naming from two ingredients of syrup. In order to unify, he changed Kola's K to C, and then added a horizontal line between the two words-Coca-Cola!
By the way, this secret recipe for "treating headaches" is still kept in the vault under the Bank of Atlanta.
2. Glass
The glass that every household has is actually a beautiful "accidental invention"! 3000 years ago, a large merchant ship full of Phoenicians came to the mouth of Bayrou River on the Mediterranean coast, and the ship was full of large chunks of natural soda crystals (main component: sodium carbonate). Being unfamiliar with the law of sea water fluctuation in this sea area, the big ship ran aground on the sandbar near the estuary.
The broad-minded Phoenicians simply jumped off the boat and made a fire here to cook, waiting for the high tide to end. Unexpectedly, this sandbar is full of fine sand, and there is no stone to support the pot. Someone suddenly remembered the rock crystal soda on the boat, so everyone started work together, moved dozens of pieces to make a stove, and then set up firewood to burn it.
When they were ready to return to the boat after dinner, they suddenly found a wonderful phenomenon: there was a shiny thing on the sand under the pot. Nobody knew what it was, so they thought they had found the treasure and put it away. In fact, when cooking with fire, the soda block supporting the pot reacts with quartz sand on the ground at high temperature to form glass.
3. Post-it notes
1964, a man named Xifo joined 3M's "polymer adhesive project" (hereinafter referred to as "super adhesive project"). In an experiment, he didn't care about the specified proportion of raw materials or the research data, so he did an experiment by himself. As a result, he found a new polymer.
Sifo excitedly showed his colleagues the polymer he developed. As a result, this kind of "a little sticky but not too sticky" thing got a unanimous evaluation: "a little useful, but I don't know where to use it" ... (This glue is very United and will always be together no matter where it is)
However, Sifo did not give up until five years later, when Sifo met a new partner, Frye. Frye is a member of the church choir. Usually, in order to practice singing, he will put a small note in the lyrics book, but the note often falls out. Once, Frye looked for a small piece of paper in front of Sifo, and Sifo suddenly realized: Why not apply adhesive to the paper and use it? In this way, post-it notes were born …
4. Microwave oven
The invention of the microwave oven is even more fantastic-it comes from a weapons research and development project. The inventor of the microwave oven was Percy LeBron Spencer, an American engineer who taught himself. After the outbreak of World War II, he worked in an arms company to develop radar technology. Sounds high, doesn't it? In fact, it is just a magnetic tube with detection function, which can emit a high-intensity radiation beam.
One day, when he was doing an experiment in the laboratory, a chocolate bar stuck to his shorts. Percy noticed that this was because the magnetron had just run and the chocolate bar in his pants melted. Under normal circumstances, weapons engineers will find this magical thing and put it into weapons research and development as soon as possible. But Percy used it to bake popcorn ... (I am such a foodie, yes ...)
Later, Percy packaged the magnetron in a box that can isolate radiation and put it on the market as a new tool for cooking delicious food-that is, the microwave oven as we know it.
5. Plastic
The invention of plastics came from photographers ... (I want to ask the inventors of that era what they were doing) In the19th century, photographers could not buy ready-made photographic films and chemicals as they do today, but had to make their own things. So every photographer must also be a chemist.
One of the materials used in photography is "collodion", which is a kind of "nitrocellulose" solution, that is, nitrocellulose solution in alcohol and ether. At that time, it was used to stick photosensitive chemicals on glass and make something similar to today's photographic film.
In the 1950s of 19, Alexander Parks studied different methods of treating collodion. One day, he accidentally mixed camphor into collodion. Unexpectedly, a flexible hard material was produced after mixing. Parks called this substance "Paxsin", which was the earliest plastic.
However, early plastics were very resistant to high temperatures. Later, through the synthesis of Leo Beckett, the first high-temperature resistant plastic was successfully developed and patented in 1909.