Big Mistake or Big Discovery

what

drives success well believe it or not

success is often driven by mistakes

sometimes the consequences are small and

go unnoticed

while other times they are monumental

and can

even change the world yes you heard me

right

they can even change the world for

instance

alexander fleming mistakenly soiled his

bacteria sample with mold

a careless mistake but the result

penicillin which has saved millions of

lives then there’s jon hyatt’s famous

bill of collodion

that dried to form what we know today is

plastic

to really see these mistakes more

clearly let’s look at french chemist

eduard benedictus

mr benedictus was born in 1867 and

passed away in 1930

his profession was not only being a

chemist but also a painter

his career commenced in the nouveau arts

period and he is well

known for his art deco images

one day in 1903 while pursuing one of

his many projects

an accident occurred involving a glass

flask

being knocked onto the floor of his

laboratory

big mistake or big discovery

well it’s the latter you see

inside the flask he had put cellulose

nitrate

a type of liquid plastic this solution

had evaporated into an invisible film

so when the flask fell the glass

shattered

but the pieces hung together in the

shape of the flask

due to the evaporated film

why is this glass shatterproof you may

ask well

this is due to the fact that it is

assembled of two or more sheets of glass

bound together by plastic polymer when

this type of glass is broken

instead of shattering it is designed to

stay put

this prevents people from being harmed

by the threatening edges

many of us in this room including myself

probably didn’t even know

that the windshields of all our cars are

constructed of safety glass

keeping us safe whilst driving today

we refer to benedictus’s mistake as

safety glass otherwise referred to as

shatterproof glass

this revolutionary discovery had a huge

impact on the world

for instance in world war 1 it was used

in gas mask lenses

today safety glass is used in all kinds

of windows

glass tables as well as glass doors

you’ll also find it in refrigerator

trays bulletproof glass

and diving masks to name just a few of

its uses

countless lives have been saved by

safety glass such as the unfortunate

chelsea bombings

in 2016 in manhattan where the lower

windows of buildings

were fitted with safety glass this

prevented glass from blasting out of the

windows

into the people on the streets

so benedictus’s clumsy mistake paid off

not only for him

but for the entire world as most of the

glass we see through today

is made of his safety glass

even though many disregard the

significance of safety glass

let’s recognize its many benefits as

listed above

and how it is key to our everyday lives

just like penicillin and plastic

and that my friends concludes just a few

examples of great

big revolutionary mistakes