Here’s where the story gets controversial, for there was more than one person who claimed the discovery of it. Researchers for Dow Corning Company and General Electric Company both claimed discovery. The present manufacturer of Silly Putty, Crayola LLC, gives the credit to James Wright, a Scottish inventor that worked for General Electric in New Haven Connecticut in 1943.

The first batch was the result of the mixing of boric acid and silicone oil. Wright found that the material would stretch if slowly pulled, but break if pulled rapidly. Rolled into a ball it would bounce, would not mold and had a high melting point. Despite these properties, Wright determined the substance was not suited for use as a rubber substitute and he sent samples to other scientists that came to the same conclusion.

The story goes that some of the substance was obtained by an owner of a toy store, Ruth Fallgatter. She hired a marketing consultant, Peter Hodgson to market the bouncing putty and put it in here catalog. It out sold everything else in the catalog except for Crayola crayons, but Fallgetter did not continue to sell it. Hodgson saw its potential, and bought $147 worth of the substance. He named it Silly Putty, packed 1 ounce portions in plastic eggs that sold for a dollar each, and sold 250,000 of them in three days. But the new business almost went under in 1951 with the start of the Korean War, as silicone, a primary ingredient of Silly Putty, was rationed.

After the war, production resumed. It was originally marketed as an adult item, but by 1955 children became the primary customers. The first advertisement for Silly Putty was produced by Hodgson in 1957 and premiered on The Howdy Doody Show.

In1961 it went world wide and became a hit in Europe and The Soviet Union. By the time Hodgson died in 1976, over 300 million eggs of the stuff had been sold and his business was worth $140 million, making it one of the most successful toys of the 20th Century. The following year Binney and Smith, the makers of Crayola crayons, bought the rights to it. By 1987, production of Silly Putty was in excess of 2 million eggs annually. So while the name may be ’silly’, the profits generated by this toy that was created by accident certainly aren’t!

1. Potato Chips – Discovered: Saratoga Springs, New York

   

   Chef George Crum made the interesting discovery of potato chips after a customer complained to him about his potato fries being cut way too thick. Being a wise guy he sliced a potato paper thin and then fried it to a crisp. The diner loved it, thus creating the world’s very first potato chip.

2. Viagra – Discovered: Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

   

   Viagra was discovered by men who were being treated with an erectile dysfunction. It was first discovered in the town of Merthyr Tydfil with the trial medicines they thought could cure the dysfunction. It has since become well known as Viagra, and is used as a male enhancement.

3. Silly Putty – Discovered: New York

   

   Silly Putty was discovered in the 1940s by a general electric scientist named James Wright while he was trying to create a synthetic rubber to use for the war. He mixed boric acid and silicon oil and got Silly Putty. Since then it has become one of the world’s most popular toys. One favorite past time includes sticking it on a newspaper and pulling it off to reveal the imprint of the comic.

4. LSD – Discovered: Switzerland

   

   LSD was discovered by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman. It was the world’s first acid hit. The year was 1943, and he had been working with a chemical called lysergic acid diethylamide. The initial reason for his research was related to childbirth. After the first try he attempted even a larger dose of it and made another discovery, the bad trip.

5. Microwave Ovens – Discovered: Massachusetts

   

   Microwave Ovens were discovered in 1946 when a magnetron melted a candy bar in Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer’s pocket. Microwave emitters powered the Allies radar in WWII.

6. Penicillin – Discovered: Scotland

   

   A Scottish scientist named Alexander Fleming was looking into a cure for the flu in 1928 when he noticed that a blue-green mold had infected one of his Petri dishes, and it had killed the staphylococcus bacteria that had been growing in it. The world’s most effective cure was actually discovered due to a contamination in the lab. What a unique coincidence!

7. X-Rays – Discovered: Germany

   

   X-rays were discovered in the 19th century by several scientists toying with penetrating rays that were emitted when electrons struck a metal target. It wasn’t fully workable until 1895 when a German scientist named Wilhelm Röntgen tried sticking different objects in front of the radiation and saw the bones on his hand projected onto the wall behind him.

8. Artificial Sweeteners – Discovered: Illinois; Maryland; Nebraska

   

   Artificial sweeteners were discovered in much the same way as penicillin. Three of them, Saccharin, Cyclamate, and Aspartame were all discovered in a one hundred year time period, and all by scientists who forgot to wash their hands after an experiment.

9. Brandy – Discovered: The Seven Seas

   

   Brandy was created by wine merchants during the medieval time period by boiling the water out of wine so that their cargo would stay fresh and take up less space when being shipped. After a while it was decided to skip the reconstitution stage altogether and brandy was accidentally created .

10. Vulcanized Rubber – Discovered: New York

    

    When rubber rots, it smells horrible unless it is vulcanized. The ancient Mesoamericans actually had their own variation of the process Charles Goodyear discovered in 1839. He accidentally dropped some rubber-sulfur compound onto a hot stove, creating the first vulcanized rubber.