Sometimes accidents happen and we're better off because they do. Historical accounts of many important discoveries and inventions tell of fortuitous accidents. A surprising number of these are associated with stories about spillage, breakage and other unintended actions that led to valuable, though unexpected, outcomes.
Probably the most famous is Alexander Fleming's discovery of the antibiotic properties of penicillin. Fleming accidentally left a dish of Staphylococcus bacteria uncovered for a few days and returned to find the dish dotted with bacterial growth, except in one area where a patch of mold (Penicillium notatum) was growing. Fleming himself said of this event, "I did not ask for a spore of Penicillium notatum to drop on my culture plate. When I saw certain changes, I had not the slightest suspicion that I was at the beginning of something extraordinary. That same mold might have dropped on any one of my culture plates, and there would have been no visible change to direct special attention to it."
Similarly, Louis Daguerre, who invented photography, made his breakthrough when he put an exposed plate into a cabinet in which a thermometer had earlier shattered; mercury vapors from the broken thermometer developed the photographic image unexpectedly.
While it is not penicillin and cannot cure a disease, in my opinion, it is the perfect brilliance of an accident.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
0 comments :
Post a Comment