WHEN USEFUL THINGS ARE INVENTED BY ACCIDENT

Some things are so much a part of everyday life, that it’s hard to imagine that they were invented by accident.

Take matches, for example. You’d think someone spent hours trying to invent a way to make it easier for everyone to light a fire. That’s not the case at all.

In the early 1800s, a British pharmacist called John Walker was routinely preparing medicine when he noticed a substance on one of the wooden sticks. When he tried to scrape it off, the stick caught fire. And that was the beginning of matches.

George Crum was a chef in New York who got annoyed when customers complained that his potato chips weren’t crispy enough. He then sliced the potatoes as thin as possible and then fried them.

While George’s chips were only lightly salted, it now comes in almost any flavour you can think of.

Antidepressants were originally manufactured to cure tuberculosis in 1957. The people behind the medicine realised that, while it might not cure the illness, it did put the patients in a better mood.

Decades later, and the antidepressants are still used today.

Watch the Bright Side video below for these and other useful things that were invented by accident.

Image credit: Flickr