by - January 26, 2012 - 11:56 AM
Some of the world’s most famous, civilization-altering discoveries happened by accident. Take Penicillin, for example. The guy who discovered it, Sir Alexander Fleming, simply forgot to clean up his work station one night and returned to discover the world’s first antibiotic growing right there in his unwashed petri dish.
But that’s not what this particular list is about. All the inventions here were invented very much on purpose – they just didn’t end up being used in the way their inventors had intended. Only after these inventions were repurposed – often in wildly unexpected ways – did they become famous, perhaps even civilization-alteringly so.
1. Listerine
Listerine was invented 133 years ago, first as a surgical antiseptic, but also as a cure for gonorrhea (don’t try that at home). An article from 1888 recommends Listerine “for sweaty feet, and soft corns, developing between the toes.” Over the course of the next century, it was marketed as a refreshing additive to cigarettes, a cure for the common cold, and as a dandruff treatment. But it was in the 1920s that the powerful, germ-killing liquid finally landed on its most lucrative use as a magical cure for bad breath.
2. Propecia
Propecia, that ubiquitous drug used to treat male-pattern baldness, was originally marketed as Proscar, a drug to treat the benign enlargement of the prostate. After five years on the market in the 1990s, it became clear that one of the side effects of Proscar was – you can practically see the money signs flashing in the pharmaceutical marketers’ eyes – hair growth on bald men. Cha-ching!
3. Viagra
Viagra, or Sildenafil, as it’s officially known, was originally conceived as a treatment for hypertension, angina, and other symptoms of heart disease. But Phase I clinical trials revealed that while the drug wasn’t great at treating what it was supposed to treat, male test subjects were experiencing a rather unexpected side effect: erections. A few years later, in 1998, the drug took U.S. markets by storm as a treatment for penile dysfunction and became an overnight success. It now rakes in an estimated $1.9 billion dollars a year.
4. Brandy
Brandy, that delightful, caramel-colored after dinner drink, started off as a byproduct of transporting wine. About 900 years ago, merchants would essentially boil the water off of large quantities of wine in order to both transport it more easily, and save on customs taxes, which were levied by volume. After a while, a few of these merchants, bored perhaps after a long day on the road, dipped into their inventory and discovered that the concentrated, or distilled, wine actually tasted pretty darn good. Voila! Brandy was born.
5. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most famous brand names, was originally invented as an alternative to morphine addiction, and to treat headaches and relieve anxiety. Coke’s inventor, John Pemberton — a Confederate veteran of the Civil War who himself suffered from a morphine addiction — first invented a sweet, alcoholic drink infused with coca leaves for an extra kick. He called it Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. It would be another two decades before that recipe was honed, sweetened, carbonated and, eventually, marketed into what it is today: the most popular soda in the world.
6. Play-Doh
Play-Doh, that strange, brightly colored, salty clay that all of us grew up molding and poking (and, occasionally, nibbling), was first invented in the 1930s by a soap manufacturer named Cleo McVickers, who thought he’d hit upon a fantastic wallpaper cleaner. It wasn’t for another twenty years that McVicker’s son, Joseph, repurposed the goop as clay for pre-schoolers and called it Play-Doh, a product that remains wildly popular among the under-5 crowd today.
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Let’s not forget Heroin. First marketed as a cough suppressant for infants by Bayer, it soon found other uses.
posted by TheBear on 1-26-2012 at 12:15 pm
Seems like duct tape would be another great one for the list.
Originally created to repair military boats and equipment….now used by urban Macgyvers everywhere to fix things around the house.
posted by Casey on 1-26-2012 at 12:28 pm
I love the story of sildenafil. It’s actually still used off-label for certain heart conditions, and is a lifesaver for “blue babies” who, for whatever reason, can’t get the surgery to repair the holes in their hearts right away. But Pfizer found the unexpected side effect so profitable they didn’t bother pursuing the clinical trials for the cardiovascular indications much more. And wisely so; impotence treatments have been a goldmine for thousands of years, despite the fact that none of them work. With Viagra, Pfizer had the very first impotence treatment that actually did work. If you can get rich selling fake impotence cures, how much more by selling a real one? Same deal with Propecia.
Kotex would be an interesting example. The Kimberly Clark company had invented cellu-cotton, a wood-pulp-based alternative to the absorbent cotton so vital in surgical dressings. It quickly found massive need when World War I broke out, and it proved very effective — so effective, in fact, that military nurses started using it for another purpose; they realized that if it was good at soaking up the blood from a soldier’s gunshot wound, it would also be good at soaking up their own menstrual blood — and it came in convenient pads about the right size to slip into one’s panties. Certainly better than the rags they were using at the time. Kimberly-Clark heard about this and promptly introduced Kotex, which it’s been selling ever since. (They also continued making the surgical dressings, of course.)
posted by Calli Arcale on 1-26-2012 at 12:45 pm
I give proscar to patients with BPH…didn’t realize the brand name is Propecia! I also didn’t notice the men using it to be any hairier.
posted by chloe on 1-26-2012 at 1:14 pm
Propecia—my grandfather invented a formula that would grow hair on a cueball, but he died penniless. Seems nobody wanted a hairy cueball…
posted by Wayne Stevens on 1-26-2012 at 1:31 pm
The story of Rogaine (minoxidil) is similar to that of Propecia (finasteride). Minoxidil was originally an oral anti-hypertensive but was found to have the side effect of hair growth (via a different mechanism from finasteride). It was reformulated as a topical medication.
posted by Allie on 1-26-2012 at 1:53 pm
I was expecting to see Silly Putty
posted by Michael Fusion on 1-26-2012 at 3:46 pm
IIRC, Kleenex tissues were originally invented as gas mask filters.
posted by MegMurry on 1-26-2012 at 4:05 pm
Is play-doh a play on Plato, and his forms? Always wondered this and thought if anybody would know, it would be a mental flosser.
posted by sara on 1-26-2012 at 4:51 pm
I always just thought doh was a shortened form of dough. Play-Doh has roughly the same consistency as dough.
posted by Brit on 1-26-2012 at 4:58 pm
@ Chloe proscar & propecia are both brand names of finasteride. They aren’t interchangeable. I work in a pharmacy & we see lots of drugs originally marketed for one thing & found to treat another. Pfizer also now has revatio which is sildenafil marketed for the heart
posted by Drizella on 1-26-2012 at 11:38 pm
A buddy used Listerine. One day I could smell it just by getting into his car. I said something to the effect of, “I can’t believe you’re supposed to put that in your mouth.” or “I can’t believe that stuff was meant to be put into your mouth.” and so there’s actually a reason for that..
posted by Tdave on 1-27-2012 at 10:08 am
“Play-Doh, a product that remains wildly popular among the under-5 crowd today.”
And some of the over 30 crowd as well.
posted by Baldric on 1-27-2012 at 10:34 am
Can’t find a link this minute, but the single-handled shower tap was designed for the handicapped. It took over 30 years for them to be commonplace. I believe they finally took hold because traveling businessmen who used hotels took a liking to them.
posted by Eric J on 1-27-2012 at 12:18 pm
So, was there really cocaine in Coke, way back when?
posted by Tom Rankin on 1-27-2012 at 1:06 pm
Seems that cracked did an article just like this fairly recently… with the same products.
posted by copy much on 1-27-2012 at 1:34 pm
Why no mention of LSD, I heard it was hugely successful in the 70′s.
posted by itsmeguys on 1-27-2012 at 1:48 pm
Superglue or cyanoacrylate is another one that has a million uses, just not the one it was meant to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate
posted by tm on 1-27-2012 at 8:57 pm
What about WD-40???
posted by suzabella on 1-29-2012 at 10:37 pm
Like Silly Putty, the Slinky was a by-product of WWII weapons research. An engineer named Richard James was designing high-tension springs, when he decided that one that kept moving after falling would make a good toy. Slinkys debuted after the war and became a huge hit. In 1960 Richard James cracked up and left his family for a South American religious cult. His wife took over the business and made it into a multimillion-dollar toy empire.
posted by Brian on 1-31-2012 at 12:37 pm
@Tom, yes, once upon a time cocaine was considered a very safe food additive, much the way we see caffeine today. Coke was particularly popular in the South where it was 1) cold and refreshing, and 2) an alternative to alcohol in “dry” counties. I heard that the cocoa leaves used to make Coca-Cola have to be detoxed under government supervision, as raw cocoa leaves are legally considered a controlled substance.
posted by SJGuy on 1-31-2012 at 12:43 pm