Sometimes by chance, and sometimes by simple inspiration or stubbornness, many technological inventions have ended up being used for things very different from their original purpose.
Having a great idea is no guarantee that it can turn into something useful. It is not even a guarantee that it seems useful to others. Thousands of great inventions have been forgotten, and others that seem simple and straightforward have ended up transforming our lives. At an intermediate point, we can find the inventions of technology that had a different use than expected.
And as we are going to see, chance has meant that some technological products have become essential because they were used for different purposes than those for which they were created.
In other cases, failed creations were rendered useful by the stubbornness of their inventors, who did not stop until they found a practical use for them. Space travel, and wars, also have their part in this story.
Each in its own way, all these inventions are a good example of human genius when creating, and finding unusual applications to an idea. Applications that save lives, cure diseases, or simply help us in our daily lives.
Here are 12 technological inventions with uses other than their original purpose…
Table of Contents
1. Microwave Oven.
The microwave is an essential appliance in any home kitchen. Who could imagine that it was invented … to fight the Nazi planes, in World War II.
In 1946, the engineer Percy Spencer was working on a magnetron, a device that transforms electrical energy into electromagnetic energy, creating a new type of waves that they named microwaves.
Spencer and his team were researching magnetrons to find a way to tamper with the radars on German planes.
In one of the experiments, the engineer realized that these microwaves had heated a chocolate bar that he carried in his pocket, to the point of melting it.
The association of ideas was immediate: those microwaves developed to alter radars, also served to heat food. It occurred to him to put his magnetron in a metal box to contain the microwaves, and a year later, in 1947, the company for which he worked, Raytheon Corporation, put the first microwave oven on sale.
2. Pacemaker.
Pacemakers save thousands of lives and allow many people to live many more years. But originally the pacemaker was… a sound recorder.
Wilson Greatbatch was a prolific American inventor, accumulating more than 300 patents.
In 1956 he was working on an audio recorder that would be placed in the heart, to record its sounds. But while building it, he misplaced a resistor. This caused his invention, instead of recording sounds, to generate a pulse that could be coordinated with the heartbeat.
Greatbatch realized that his invention did not have much use as a sound recorder, but could be used to control the rhythm of a diseased heart. It was presented to surgeon William Chardack in 1958, who, after testing it on dogs, created the first pacemaker implanted in a human, in 1960.
3. Bubble Wrap.
We all have bubble wrap at home, and we’ve used it to protect delicate products when shipping packages, or when storing them.
Bubble wrap was invented by Al Fielding and Marc Chavannes in 1957, but their original idea was very different from current use. What these two inventors wanted to create was … volume wallpaper.
In the last century, the walls of houses were lined with paper, but it was completely smooth. Fielding and Chavannes thought a voluminous wallpaper would be a success… but it wasn’t. Nobody wanted to put it in their homes.
Two years later, in 1959, Frederick W. Bowers, a salesperson for the Sealer Air company that marketed the failed bubble wrap, learned that IBM was looking for a way to package its IBM 1401 computer, to ship to customers. At that time computers were the size of a closet, they were very delicate and weighed hundreds of kilos:
Bowers had a great idea: turn bubble wallpaper into wrapping paper. He did a test run for IBM and they were satisfied, so they used it to protect their computers during transport.
IBM was not only a pioneer in computing, it was also the first to use bubble wrap to protect packages.
60 years later, Sealed Air continues to bill $ 400 million annually for the rights to its invention.
4. Windows Solitaire and Minesweeper.
Windows Solitaire along with Minesweeper, are considered the two most-played games in history.
They came installed by default in Windows, and it is estimated that more than 1 billion people have played them to pass the time. They have even been grounds for dismissal at work.
You might think that these games were intended as a hobby for Windows users, but they are not. Microsoft did not devise them as video games but as learning tools.
They were created with a single purpose: to teach users to operate the mouse. Before Windows, MS-DOS and Unix were used, operating systems based on commands that had to be typed in. With Windows, the mouse was released, but few people knew how to use it.
If you notice, in these games you have to continuously move the mouse across the screen, and make many clicks with precision. It is just a training to learn how to handle it accurately.
5. Super Glue.
The popular quick-drying glue, or super glue, was invented in 1942 by engineer Harry Coover. But it wasn’t glue he was looking for.
Harry Coover worked for the Kodak photographic company, and he was looking for a plastic material that was very transparent. Thus he invented cyanoacrylate, a transparent plastic, but not enough for the purpose he sought.
However, this new compound had a surprising property: it was liquid and sticky, and in contact with air it solidified quickly.
Coover perfected his compound after some time, but its first commercial use didn’t come until years later when soldiers used it … to glue bones that were broken during the battle, as an emergency solution. It was used mainly in the Vietnam War.
The health authorities banned super glue as a sanitary glue, but they did allow it to be used domestically to repair things. It began to become popular in the 60s of the last century.
6. Rubik’s cube.
The Rubik‘s Cube is one of the toys most gifted to children in recent decades. It’s almost perfect: cheap, educational, and fun.
We have all tried to complete this puzzle at some time, although few succeed.
But the Rubik’s cube was not invented as a toy. Not even as a challenge. Its creator, architecture professor Erno Rubik, designed it in 1974 as a tool for his students to be able to visualize spatial concepts used in architecture.
Rubik saw it as a piece of art and not as a toy. But he found that his students liked to return it to its original form when class was over.
So he patented it and sold it as a toy three years later, in 1977. Today it is the best-selling puzzle in the world.
7. Umbrella.
The umbrella has been used for hundreds of years, but in its beginnings, it had a different function than today. In some places, it is called a parasol, and it perfectly describes its original function: it was used in countries like France and China to protect against the sun.
And it was considered a feminine accessory.
In the 18th century, it was exported to the United Kingdom, and legend has it that the Englishman Jonas Hanway was the first to use it to protect himself from the rain, in 1750.
Since then, that has been its only use, because nowadays almost no one uses it to protect themselves from the sun, although a variant of it, Beach umbrella, is very popular.
8. Corkscrew.
Everyone has a corkscrew at home. It is essential to enjoy a bottle of wine. But in its origins, the corkscrew had a very different use than today.
It was already used in the seventeenth century… in the military field. In a 1795 patent, it was indicated its use to extract the bullets that were stuck inside the carabiners. And also, to extract bullets from inside a wound, when they were deeply embedded in bone or muscle.
It was not until the 18th century that corks began to be used in wine bottles. Thus it acquired a new use that it has maintained for more than 200 years.
9. Braille.
Currently, blind people use Braille language to read, but this language is inspired by others that were used before.
In 1808, French Army Captain Charles Barbier invented the nocturnal language.
It was a written language intended to be read with the fingers, completely in the dark. It was intended for the military and spies to read coded messages in the middle of the night. In a war, turning on a light was equivalent to telegraphing your position to the enemy.
After completing his military work, Charles Barbier began to propose his Barbier Alphabet to be used by the blind. Louis Braille used this nocturnal language to create his language for the blind.
10. The Cordless Vacuum Cleaner.
NASA has provided humanity with numerous inventions, from smoke detectors to memory foam mattresses… and athletic shoes.
One of the most curious is the cordless vacuum cleaner. But its original use was not to clean the dust off a rocket ship…
NASA needed a contraption to collect stones from the Moon, without the astronauts having to bend down each time. Their suits weren’t very stretchy…
They contacted the company Black & Decker, and it manufactured a handheld vacuum cleaner, which worked without cables. He then used this technology to make the first commercial cordless vacuum cleaner, in 1979.
11. Treadmill.
The treadmill is over a hundred years old, but it wasn’t invented for exercising or burning calories. In 1818 it was used in prisons as a method of punishment for inmates.
Some schools also used it to punish students, who ran on a belt that was at the same time used to grind wheat.
It was not until well into the twentieth century, when fitness became fashionable, that it began to be used in gyms, and in the homes themselves as a sports tool.
But it has not lost its status as a torture device…
12. Insulating Tape.
Many professions, as well as DIY enthusiasts and housework, couldn’t survive without duct tape.
In its origins, duct tape was used by the military. Unfortunately, wars are an excellent catalyst for great ideas…
During World War II, the US military asked the Johnson & Johnson company for a system to protect the ammunition from water and mud. They created a waterproof, polyethylene tape with an adhesive on one side.
It turned out to be a strong, protective, and highly moldable material, so its usefulness extended beyond military use, to protect bullets and bombs. Today it is mainly used in repairs.
