Accidental: The Greatest (Unintentional) Science Breakthroughs and How they Changed the World
Tim James (Robinson, £20)
TIM JAMES, a former teacher, explains scientific matters simply and engagingly to the layman. This is his jauntily written, highly entertaining account of how many everyday things were discovered or invented by accident. The secret to being a successful scientist often seems to come down to being messy, forgetful or clumsy. Many discoveries were as a result of not washing up or tidying away, by dropping things, which either break or do not (leading to the invention of Triplex), falling into something that sparks an unintended reaction or rubbing against something (hence the matchstick).
One invention even came down to a lack of German language skills. Alexander Graham Bell thought the telephone had already been invented after reading a book by German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz or, rather, after looking at the diagrams in it, as he couldn’t read German. Bell merely set out to build his own version and it was only when he got hold of a copy of the book in French, a language he did understand, did he realise he had, in fact, invented something new.
When Pfizer trialled a new drug intended to cure angina, it proved to give little or no relief from this heart complaint. Then, one of the nurses reported that she found each of the men who had tested the drug lying on their stomachs, refusing to be interviewed standing or sitting. A bit of gentle questioning revealed their embarrassment. Pfizer had invented Viagra.
This was not the only occasion when an attempt at invention turned out to be both an abject failure and a huge success. In 1942, Harry Coover was asked by the US military to create a transparent plastic for gun sights, but ended up only producing ‘a ludicrously sticky goo which bonded to everything it touched’. Reviewing his experiment six years later, Coover realised that he had created what we now know as Super Glue. Spencer Silver set out to make a glue for aeroplane metal, but failed. Several years later, he realised he had created the basis of the Post-it. Mr James writes: ‘Today Super Glue™, a failed plastic, is worth $2.5 billion while Post-it™, a failed glue, is worth $2.3 billion.’ It can pay to be wrong. Roderick Easdale