Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
Just ask the inventors of these products, each one having changed the way we live, and each one having come about either by serendipity or complete fuck-up. We're talking about...
The Microwave Oven
The microwave oven, aka the "Popcorn and Hot Pockets Warmer," was a happy accident that came from, of all things, a weapons program.
Percy LeBaron Spencer was a self-educated engineer working on radar technology in the years following WWII. The technology in question was the sci-fi sounding magnetron, a piece of machinery capable of firing high intensity beams of radiation...Read more