It is interesting how far progress could have gone if Aristarchus of Samos in the ill century. BC e. was heard by contemporaries and people learned almost 2 millennia earlier that the Earth, along with other planets, revolves around the Sun?
We can say that the modern world is just the result of a consistent chain of discoveries and inventions made by man over the millennia. When it comes to discoveries, the imagination immediately draws a naked Archimedes jumped out of the bathtub or an apple that fell from a branch onto Newton's head. Periodic table of elements, dreamed of by
Mendeleev, or America, accidentally discovered by Columbus - what is it? Luck, surprise, miracle, or is it a pattern, which is based on a persistent desire to expand the horizons of knowledge?
Many discoveries took by surprise not only the researchers who made them, but the entire scientific community. Apparently, that is why the fame of the random was entrenched for them, although in reality they were simply unexpected. Such discoveries include X-rays, electric current, electron, radioactivity, already revealed when the atom was still considered indivisible, and atomic energy.
However, the last of these was not entirely sudden. Many scientists predicted the possibility of using energy obtained through the transformation of matter, and even associated this energy with atomic reactions. So from a technical point of view, only the moment of the onset of this event remained unforeseen. Any discoveries, including supposedly accidental ones, are the result of previous research that prepares a base for them.
“A false step more than once led to the opening of new roads,” the master of aphorisms Leszek Kumor once said, and America, found by Christopher Columbus on his way to India, is a textbook example. But can this be called an accident?
Imagine the situation: Columbus appeals to the country's leadership with a dubious proposal that requires huge financial investments. He is completely unexpectedly assigned a squadron (albeit a small one), and he sails into the endless ocean, and there he suddenly discovers a new continent. Something too unprecedented coincidence of circumstances.
Of course, this event should belong to the section not accidental, but erroneous. Indeed, in the era of great geographical discoveries, travelers sailed into the unknown, not knowing in advance what and where they would find. However, their persistent search for new lands made subsequent finds a natural consequence.
There were many mistakes of this kind in that century. For example, the famous French navigator La Pérouse mistakenly decided that Sakhalin is a peninsula. His opinion was confirmed by none other than Kruzenshtern. And only Nevelskoy's expedition corrected this delusion.
With the advent of aircraft and spacecraft, geography stopped giving researchers a reason for accidental and erroneous discoveries. Which, however, cannot be said about other areas of science that are still able to protect their secrets from annoying pundits. A significant part of accidental discoveries relates to chemistry and related fields (biochemistry, pharmaceuticals), and many of them relate to previously unknown elements or compounds. Accident? Far from it, because these substances already existed in nature and would inevitably be identified. The only question was when and by whom it could be done.
Consider, for example, one of the common stories of the discovery of iodine. The French chemist Bernard Courtois had a favorite cat. Once he, frightened of something, inadvertently jumped to the floor and dropped the bottles that were near the laboratory table. In one of them Courtois prepared a suspension of algae ash in ethanol for the experiment, and in the other there was concentrated sulfuric acid. Bottles broke and liquids mixed. Clouds of blue-violet steam began to rise from the floor, which settled on the surrounding objects in the form of tiny black-violet crystals with a metallic sheen and a pungent odor. It was a new chemical element - iodine …
Answer honestly: do you always have a bottle of sulfuric acid on hand? I do not have. That is, the accident of this discovery was only in the fact that the original elements were mixed without the participation of a scientist. However, he carefully considered the results of this unintentional experiment and drew the right conclusions. As Bernard Baruch said, "millions of people saw apples fall, but only Newton asked why." And this readiness of the scientist to ask questions, his desire to study the unknown, as well as the habit of keeping sulfuric acid ready, are not at all accidental!
Even if there is an element of randomness in the discovery of new substances or lands, one cannot but admit that they were all made by researchers who purposefully carried out work in their direction. Numerous re-discoveries prove their inevitability.
The following facts are most widely known: most of the 500 laws discovered by Robert Hooke were simultaneously identified by other scientists; Lord Kelvin made 32 discoveries, which were also made by 30 other scientists; many aspects of the theory of relativity simultaneously with Albert Einstein were developed by André Poincaré.
Of particular interest are the discoveries made at almost the same time by several scientists, often literally hours apart. So, the theory of natural selection was presented on July 1, 1858 in the Linnean Society by two researchers at once - Darwin and Wallace. True, Darwin developed the theory of the evolution of species for 20 years, while Wallace took one week. Alexander Chizhevsky came to the conclusion about the coincidence of social crises with the maximums of solar activity simultaneously with the ethnographer Vasily Anuchin, who described this fact in the book "Social Law".
This is how the periodic table of elements was created. Everyone knows that Dmitry Mendeleev saw her in a dream. But not everyone has heard that before him attempts to systematize elements were undertaken by Johann Debereiner, Leopold Gmelin, Max von Pettenkofer, Jean Dumas, Adolph Strecker, William Odling, Alexander de Chancourtois, John Newlands and Julius Lothar Meyer.
Unexpected joy
BRANDY
In the Middle Ages, shipping merchants often evaporated water from transported
wine so that it would not spoil on the road and take up less space. Soon, someone resourceful decided to do without the recovery phase of the water extracted during the distillation. He suddenly discovered that the taste of fortified wine is great, and its effect is much stronger. This is how brandy appeared, which is now so popular all over the world.
POTATO CHIPS
Everyone's favorite crispy potato was born as a sign of protest. One of the clients of the chef, George Krum, constantly complained that the potatoes were cut too thick and not fried properly. When the cook got tired of listening to the complaints, he cut it into slices almost as thick as a sheet of paper and fried in a huge amount of oil. Krum did not even suspect that his "revenge" would be so tasty and henceforth he would only have to cook potatoes for a fastidious client.
X-RAYS
Many scientists were interested in the rays that appear as a result of the impact of electrons on a metal target. In 1895, the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen exposed various objects to this radiation and. changing them, I accidentally saw the projection of the bones of his own hand reflected on the wall. This is how X-rays were discovered that can "shine through" the human body.
BUNS with raisins
This story refers rather to legends than to reliable facts, but nevertheless deserves attention. Once Governor-General Arseny Zakrevsky. having bought a fresh sausage, I saw in it … a cockroach. The baker Ivan Filippov, summoned to the carpet, grabbed the insect and ate it in front of the astonished audience, saying that the general was mistaken - it was a highlight. Back at the bakery. Filippov ordered to urgently start baking buns with raisins, he did not even suspect that they would be in such demand.
PENICILLIN
Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming in 1928 studied the fight of the human body against influenza. Having grown staphylococcal cultures in 3 Petri dishes, he found that the dishes were poorly washed and mold had settled in them. Fleming was upset, but, looking more closely, he noticed that staphylococci had died around the mold spots. After some time, he isolated the penicillin molecule from the mold, the world's first antibiotic.
MICROWAVES
If engineer Percy Gunser did not like chocolate, the whole world would probably still use pots and pans for heating food. Microwave emitters were installed on Allied radars during World War II. Working near one of the radars. At some point, Spencer discovered that the emitter had melted a chocolate bar in his pocket. He was a little upset, but at the same time seriously thought, and then created a microwave that is indispensable in every home.
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide initially interested scientists exclusively as an aid in childbirth. However, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann decided to test the new drug on himself. The scientist dubbed April 19, 1943 Bicycle Day, as under the influence of "acid" he made an unforgettable ride on this transport, and from that day he devoted his life to studying the effects of LSD on the psyche and consciousness.
VIAGRA
Who would have thought that the famous Viagra appeared thanks to research on the invention of a remedy for angina. Men all over the world, and women too, can thank the inhabitants of the Welsh city of Merthyr Tydefill. It was here in 1992 that male patients refused to return the experimental tablets after testing ended. Pfizer executives paid due attention to this turn of events - and soon a new drug was introduced.
Sooner or later?
The fact that any discovery has a definite base makes it possible, by analyzing the predecessors, to make an assumption about future achievements. These predicted finds include the planet Pluto, whose existence a quarter of a century before had been proved by calculation by astronomer Percival Lovell. The recent discovery of Uranus's satellites was predicted by Soviet astronomers Nikolai Garkavy and Alexei Fridman. Mendeleev predetermined the discovery of eka-aluminum (Ga), ekabor (Sc) and ekasilicon (Ge), as well as analogues of manganese, tellurium, iodine, cesium, barium and tantalum. The existence of inert gases was predicted by William Ramsay. Radio waves were identified by Hertz based on Maxwell's assumption of their existence.
Today, many scientists predict the imminent discovery of one or even more planets in the solar system, as well as habitable or habitable planets in other star systems.
However, the history of science knows many cases when scientists simply ignored a certain fact, because it was in deep contradiction with traditional ideas or could not be used in applied research and applied in technology. Such discoveries are called premature, and later, when people's consciousness is ready for new knowledge, they radically change the prevailing worldview and become the basis for a more accurate understanding of reality. Some of the more famous are:
♦ The heliocentric system was proposed at the beginning of the 3rd century. BC e. Aristarchus of Samos, but then forgotten until the discovery of Nicolaus Copernicus.
♦ Back in the 17th century. it was known that the weight of certain substances increased when fired, and the French chemist Leferb suggested that the reason for this was the attachment of some "universal spirit." However, this hypothesis was not developed due to the dominance of the phlogiston theory. The fact that the weight of a number of bodies increased during their firing was rediscovered in the second half of the 18th century. and played a huge role in the creation of the oxygen theory of combustion, which destroyed the phlogiston theory.
♦ Gregor Mendel in the 19th century. revealed the laws of inheritance of traits and connected them with the combinatorial theory of hereditary factors, or genes. But only in the early 1950s. Barbara McClintock discovered mobile elements that can move along chromosomes, for which she received the Nobel Prize.
♦ The conjecture about the force of gravity acting between all bodies in the Universe was put forward by Francis Bacon about a century before Isaac Newton.
♦ The famous botanist Robert Brown discovered the random movement of pollen in water, but thought that he was dealing with some living creatures. And only 100 years later, physicist Jean Perrin managed to interpret this as the movement of atoms.
Such a delay in the recognition of some outstanding achievements is a natural phenomenon in the history of science. This is rooted in the socio-psychological characteristics of people, most of whom are not ready to quickly and adequately respond to revolutionary changes. After all, “nothing distracts scientists like a premature discovery,” Jean Rostand subtly noted.
THE CREATION OF HUMAN HANDS
Speaking about discoveries, one should not forget about the other side of the coin - about inventions. After all, the former only only let the world know about the existence of phenomena or processes, while the latter are hand-made works created exclusively thanks to the efforts and imagination of the person himself. However, here we are faced with the same tendencies.
In 1844, Charles Goodyear discovered a recipe for making a material that does not soften in the heat and does not become brittle in the cold. Prior to that, he had tried unsuccessfully for many years to improve the quality of rubber until he accidentally heated a mixture of it with sulfur on a kitchen stove. The invention of rubber made the modern automobile possible. Naturally, it cannot be called accidental, because Goodyear has been mixing rubber with various substances for many years. It's just that he was more fortunate this time. This is a typical example of the application of the trial and error method, which one day deservedly rewarded a researcher for many years of efforts.
It would seem that there can be no completely unintentional inventions. But, nevertheless, here there is an element of chance. Although, like discoveries, such inventions are rather not accidental, but erroneous. For example, the chocolate chip cookies came about when innkeeper Ruth Wakefield decided to bake buttery cookies. The woman broke a chocolate bar and mixed the pieces of chocolate with the dough, hoping that the chocolate would melt and give the dough a brown and chocolatey flavor. However, she was let down by her ignorance of the laws of physics, and she took out biscuits with pieces of chocolate from the oven.
The sticky notes are the result of an unsuccessful experiment to improve the durability of the adhesive. An employee of the ZM research laboratory was trying to improve the quality of the adhesive tape (scotch tape). However, he received a not very durable glue that did not absorb into the glued surfaces. Four years later, a colleague, annoyed that the bookmarks in the book fell out, remembered glue that could secure them without damaging the pages of the book. This is how stickers, irreplaceable in any office, were invented. It is clearly seen that all the listed inventions were only a "side effect" of purposefully carried out work.
Along with unexpected inventions, most of which are of an applied nature, there were also those, the appearance of which was eagerly awaited in many countries of the world. And then repeated, and sometimes simultaneous, were born. Few know that about 30 steamboats were built and used in England and the United States by the time Robert Fulton patented his Claremont.
And here are the most famous and dramatic cases of simultaneous inventions:
♦ Alexander Graham Bell submitted a patent application for the telephone two hours before Elisha Gray, which robbed him of both fame and reward for many years of painstaking work on the device.
♦ Radio was invented almost simultaneously by Popov and Marconi.
♦ The telescope was constructed almost simultaneously in Holland at the beginning of the 17th century. Lippersgey, Metzius and Jansen.
At the same time, those who deny the inevitability of inventions note that many of them, although they perform the same functions, do not differ in special similarities. In my opinion, this fact only confirms the principle of the lawfulness of inventions, since it proves that scientists did not "copy" from each other, but carried out work completely apart from their colleagues.
RUNNING WITH FANTASY
in the field of solar energy was simply suppressed by representatives of large oil concerns. Perhaps the age of environmentally friendly energy will come to the planet only after the last drop of black gold is sold.
Despite these negative moments, practice shows that any phenomenon existing in nature will sooner or later be discovered, and an invention, especially if it is based on any discovery or has serious developments in the past, will certainly come true. Thus, there is no doubt that inventive creativity develops in accordance with certain patterns. This gives hope that more efficient mechanisms for predicting new inventions can be created in the future. One of the methods of such a forecast is the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), created in the USSR, but developed in the industrially developed countries of the West and East.
Creative natures - science fiction writers - provide food for thought to engineers and inventors. Like impatient drivers, they constantly pose new challenges to scientists. For example, Jules Berne in the century before last described a journey in a submarine in color, H. G. Wells in 1914 published the story "The World Liberated", in which he spoke about the use of atomic weapons, and Ray Bradbury spoke about travel into the past in a time machine. Modern science fiction writers are also not far behind - they tell about spatial and temporal portals and about regeneration chambers, in which a whole organism can be recreated from one living cell. As soon as scientists proudly present to the world another realized fantasy of artists, the following goals are immediately set for them.
But sometimes new devices outstrip the needs of modern society. The so-called premature inventions are interesting in that their creators anticipated the emergence of this need in the future. The most famous examples are:
♦ Leonardo da Vinci: helicopter, gun carriage, rifled firearms, rolling and drawing mills, centrifugal pump, hydraulic press and parachute.
♦ Kulibin: a lantern with a mirror reflector (a prototype of a spotlight), an elevator
and a flexible leg prosthesis.
Of course, there is also a directly opposite situation, when inventions are late, that is, there are all the prerequisites for creating a new device, and scientists cannot figure out exactly how to design it for them. Here are a couple of such examples:
♦ The first laser only started working
in 1960, although theoretically they could have been created immediately after the appearance of Einstein's work on the quantum theory of induced radiation (1916).
♦ Telescopes were used as early as the 13th century, but it took another four centuries to use four pairs of glasses instead of one pair, and thus create a telescope.
Unfortunately, the history of discoveries and inventions has its dark periods. Too often, artificial barriers have been created before scientific advancement. For centuries, the church has been a brake on progress. The most famous examples of the pursuit of innovation for ideological reasons in the XX century. there are persecutions of geneticists ("the reactionary doctrine of the priest Mendel") and cybernetics ("the corrupt girl" of imperialism) in the USSR, which led to a catastrophic lag in these areas. Well, nowadays financial censorship is becoming more and more distinct. For example, there are cases when research in the field of solar energy was simply suppressed by representatives of large oil concerns. Perhaps the age of environmentally friendly energy will come to the planet only after the last drop of black gold is sold.
Despite these negative moments, practice shows that any phenomenon existing in nature will sooner or later be discovered, and an invention, especially if it is based on any discovery or has serious developments in the past, will certainly come true. Thus, there is no doubt that inventive creativity develops in accordance with certain laws.
This gives hope that more efficient mechanisms for predicting new inventions can be created in the future. One of the methods of such a forecast is the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ), created in the USSR, but developed in the industrially developed countries of the West and East.