Serendipitous Discovery

Mauveine (Aniline Purple dye)

Before the 1850s, the general palette of common clothing was decidedly drab. Dyes and
paints were made from natural materials. Plants, leaves, roots, minerals and insects were used to
create lovely hues, but most often they were subtle, inconsistent and impermanent. All this changed
in 1856 when 18-year-old chemistry student William Perkins was working to create an artificial
quinine to help treat malaria, and instead came up with a muddy coal tar residue. Upon closer
inspection, he noticed a stunning color: mauve. And just like that, Perkins had stumbled across the
world's first aniline dye, a dye that would consistently produce a vivid and uniform shade that
paved the way for synthetic colors as we know them today. (The 1980s thank you, Mr. Perkins.)
The royal court fell head over heels for mauve, as did all of London and much of the world. But
aside from the mauve madness, the first commercial application of a chemistry discovery created
a paradigm shift. Organic chemistry became exciting and profitable and as a result, it enticed
many young minds to pursue industrial applications of chemistry, ultimately leading to important
advances in medicine, perfume, photography and explosives.

Vulcanized rubber

America in the 1830s was in the grip of rubber fever; factories had sprung up to meet the
demand for goods made from this waterproof gum. But the craze ended abruptly rubber froze
hard in the winter and melted to glue in the summer. Bankrupt, self-taught chemist Charles
Goodyear spent years trying to make rubber more durable. In 1839 he was showcasing his latest
experiment and dropped the rubber mixture on a hot stove. When it dried, it was a charred leather-
like substance with an elastic rim. It was still rubber but had transformed: it was vulcanized, or
weatherproof. Goodyear insisted it wasnt an accident, and that the hot-stove incident held
meaning only for the man whose mind was prepared to draw an inference. Sadly, Goodyear
didnt reap the benefits of his discovery and died $200,000 in debt. Vulcanized rubber is still in
use today, notably in car tires.

Radioactivity

French scientist Henri Becquerel was working on phosphorescent materials, which glow
in the dark after exposure to light. The chance discovery came during an experiment involving a
uranium-enriched crystal. He believed sunlight was the reason that the crystal would burn its image
on a photographic plate. One stormy day in 1896, he decided to leave it for the day and resume his
experiments when the weather was better. A few days later, he took his crystal out of a darkened
drawer. The image burned on the plate was fogged the crystal had still emitted rays, despite
the lack of sunlight. It was clear that there was a form of invisible radiation that could pass through
paper, causing the plate to react as if exposed to light. His research was continued by Pierre and
Marie Curie, who named the phenomenon radioactivity. In the early years after the discovery, the
dangers of radiation were not well understood. Today, its use is more closely monitored, and it has
a range of uses in industry and medicine.
X-rays

In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rntgen was tinkering with a tube of cathode
rays, the phosphorescent stream of electrons used today in everything from televisions to
fluorescent light bulbs, when he noticed that a piece of paper covered in barium platinocyanide
began to glow across the room. He knew that the flickering he saw was not being created by the
cathode rays because they would not travel that far. Not knowing what the rays were, he named it
X-radiation signifying the unknown nature. Upon further research he discovered a host of materials
transparent to the radiation and that the rays could affect photographic plates. He took an X-ray
photograph of his wife's hand that showed her bones and a ring; the image aroused great interest
and ensured his place in the history of medicine and science. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in
physics in 1901.

Plastic

Although earlier plastics had relied on organic material, the first fully synthetic plastic was
invented in 1907 when Leo Hendrik Baekeland accidentally created Bakelite. His initial quest was
to invent a ready replacement for shellac, an expensive product derived from lac beetles. Baekeland
combined formaldehyde with phenol, a waste product of coal, and subjected the mixture to heat.
Rather than a shellac-like material, he inadvertently created a polymer that was unique in that it
didnt melt under heat and stress. The new thermosetting plastic was used for everything from
phones to jewelry to clocks. It was also the first synthetic material to really stand on its own; it
wasnt used to mimic a natural material like ivory or tortoise shell, ushering in a era of new
synthetic materials that has yet to subside.

Teflon

Its a popular misconception that the non-stick coating was a by-product of NASAs endeavours
in space. In truth, Teflon was first created by a scientist named Roy Plunkett who was toying with
CFC gases to create a new refrigerant. Plunkett stored cylinders of a gas known as
tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) in dry ice so they wouldnt explode in the lab, but when he came to use
the gas, he discovered waxy, white flakes in its place. This new substance was incredibly slippery
and stable, resistant to heat, water, acid and pretty much everything else he could throw at it. It
wasnt until French engineer Marc Gregoire worked out how to bond it to aluminium that the first
non-stick pan was produced and the brand Teflon soon followed.

Penicillin

Although antibiotics may get a bum rap for their prevalence and overuse, life before them
was fraught with untamable infection and few defensive tools. Penicillin was the first antibiotic, a
discovery that happened in 1929 when a young bacteriologist, Sir Alexander Fleming, was tidying
up his lab. After having been on vacation, he returned to work to find that a petri dish of
Staphylococcus bacteria had been left uncovered; and he noticed that mold on the culture had
killed many of the bacteria. He identified the mold as penicillium notatum, and upon further
research found that it could kill other bacteria and could be given to small animals without ill
effect. A decade later, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain picked up where Fleming left off and
isolated the bacteria-killing substance found in the mold penicillin. The three won the Nobel
Prize in medicine in 1945 "for the discovery of penicillin and its curative effect in various
infectious diseases. At right, a laboratory worker measures purified penicillin into bottles. In this
process, the substance was freeze-dried and the ice evaporated off under vacuum. The powder left
behind was penicillin.

Explosives

Although his wife had forbidden him to do so, Schnbein occasionally experimented at
home in the kitchen. One day in 1845, when his wife was away, he spilled a mixture of nitric acid
and sulfuric acid. After using his wife's cotton apron to mop it up, he hung the apron over the stove
to dry, only to find that the cloth spontaneously ignited and burned so quickly that it seemed to
disappear. Schnbein, in fact, had converted the cellulose of the apron, with the nitro groups (added
from the nitric acid) serving as an internal source of oxygen; when heated, the cellulose was
completely and suddenly oxidized. Schnbein recognized the possibilities of the new compound.
Ordinary black gunpowder, which had reigned supreme in the battlefield for the past 500 years,
exploded into thick smoke, blackening the gunners, fouling cannons and small arms, and obscuring
the battlefield. Nitrocellulose was perceived as a possible "smokeless powder" and a propellant for
artillery shells thus it received the name of guncotton.

Attempts to manufacture guncotton for military use failed at first because the factories
were prone to explode and, above all else, the burning speed of straight guncotton was always
too high. It was not until 1884 that Paul Vieille tamed guncotton into a successful progressive
smokeless gunpowder called Poudre B. Later on, in 1891, James Dewar and Frederick Augustus
Abel also managed to transform gelatinized guncotton into a safe mixture, called cordite because
it could be extruded into long thin cords before being dried.