Krazy Glue and/or Super Glue
The story goes that in 1942, Dr. Harry Coover was working for Eastman Kodak, a company renowned for cameras and camera-related things. His job was to find a plastic that could be used as a clear gunsight, since this was smack in the middle of WWII and everybody knew where the money was.
Coover got frustrated because the material, called cyanoacrylate, was just too damned sticky. Rather than noticing he accidentally made one of the most versatile adhesives of all time, he threw it away in a huff and continued sweating over gunsights for a war that would be ended, ironically, by two bombs with blast radiuses so big that they didn't even require sights at all.
Years later, Coover would re-discover his invention, we prefer to think due to him noticing that old container of cyanoacrylate was still stuck to the bottom of his trash can and couldn't be removed by any means.
In 1958, after finally convincing his bosses that at the very least, there was enormous comedic potential in the prospect of a man getting his hand permanently stuck to his junk; Kodak released the glue with the catchy name "Eastman 910."
Somebody then decided to actually pay the marketing guys to do something, and they decided the best way to convince people to buy this new product was to suspend a car over a public street with a crane, supposedly held up only with the ol' 910.
Reactions resulted in the product being coined "Krazy Glue"; a product so crazy that it requires intentional misspelling. The early slogan, "Remember, you can only use it once before it completely solidifies in the tube!" was quickly dropped and it remains a top-selling product to this day.
Read more: 5 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World
Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_17134_5-accidental-inventions-that-changed-world.html#ixzz1s3nfSOlb
The story goes that in 1942, Dr. Harry Coover was working for Eastman Kodak, a company renowned for cameras and camera-related things. His job was to find a plastic that could be used as a clear gunsight, since this was smack in the middle of WWII and everybody knew where the money was.
Coover got frustrated because the material, called cyanoacrylate, was just too damned sticky. Rather than noticing he accidentally made one of the most versatile adhesives of all time, he threw it away in a huff and continued sweating over gunsights for a war that would be ended, ironically, by two bombs with blast radiuses so big that they didn't even require sights at all.
Years later, Coover would re-discover his invention, we prefer to think due to him noticing that old container of cyanoacrylate was still stuck to the bottom of his trash can and couldn't be removed by any means.
In 1958, after finally convincing his bosses that at the very least, there was enormous comedic potential in the prospect of a man getting his hand permanently stuck to his junk; Kodak released the glue with the catchy name "Eastman 910."
Somebody then decided to actually pay the marketing guys to do something, and they decided the best way to convince people to buy this new product was to suspend a car over a public street with a crane, supposedly held up only with the ol' 910.
Reactions resulted in the product being coined "Krazy Glue"; a product so crazy that it requires intentional misspelling. The early slogan, "Remember, you can only use it once before it completely solidifies in the tube!" was quickly dropped and it remains a top-selling product to this day.
Read more: 5 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World
Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_17134_5-accidental-inventions-that-changed-world.html#ixzz1s3nfSOlb
