Serendipity

Serendipity

Serendipity means a "happy accident" or "pleasant surprise“.

specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it.

The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.

Etymology;

• The first noted use of "serendipity" in the English language was by Horace Walpole (1717–1792).

• He said he formed it from the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of".

Role in business and strategy

“windfalls that were not anticipated by the buyer prior to the deal": i.e., unexpected advantages or benefits incurred due to positive synergy effects of the merger.

Serendipity is a key concept in Competitive Intelligence because it is one of the tools for avoiding Blind Spots.

TOP RATED;

1.Penicillin.

2. LSD.

3.Potato Chips.

4.Microwave OVEN.

5.Teflon.

Penicillin

• In 1928, Scottish Scientist Sir Alexander Fleming was studying Staphylococcus – the bacteria that causes food poisoning.

• He turned up at work one day and discovered a blue-green mould that seemed to be inhibiting growth of the bacteria.

• He grew a pure culture of the mould and discovered that it was a Penicillium mould.

LSD• LSD was first synthesized on

November 16, 1938 by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, as part of a large research program searching for medically useful ergot alkaloid derivatives.

• Its psychedelic properties were unknown until 5 years later, when Hofmann, acting on what he has called a “peculiar presentiment,” returned to work on the chemical

Potato Chips

• The first potato chip was invented by George Crum (half American Indian half African American) at Moon’s Lake House near Saratoga Springs, New York, on August 24, 1853.

• He was fed up with the constant complaints of a customer who kept sending his potatoes back to the kitchen because they were too thick and soggy.

• Crum decided to slice the potatoes so thin that they couldn’t be eaten with a fork.

• Against Crum’s expectation, the customer was ecstatic about the new chips. They became a regular item on the lodge’s menu under the name

Flavored chips;

• In an idea originated by the Smiths Potato Crisps Company Ltd, formed in 1920,[9] Frank Smith originally packaged a twist of salt with his crisps in greaseproof paper bags, which were then sold around London.

Microwave OVEN

• Percy LeBaron Spencer of the Raytheon Company was walking past a radar tube and he noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket melted. Realizing that he might be on to a hot new product he placed a small bowl of popcorn in front of the tube and it quickly popped all over the room. Tens of millions of lazy cooks now have him to thank for their dull food!

Teflon

Teflon - Roy Plunkett:

• Roy Plunkett, whose experienced immense frustration while inadvertently inventing Teflon in 1938. Plunkett had hoped to create a new variety of chlorofluorocarbons (better known as universally-despised CFCs), when he came back to check on his experiment in a refrigeration chamber.

• When he inspected a canister that was supposed to be full of gas, he found that it appeared to have vanished — leaving behind only a few white flakes.

• The new substance proved to be a fantastic lubricant with an extremely high melting point — perfect at first for military gear, and now the stuff found finely applied across your non-stick cookware.

Artificial sweetener:

Saccharin - Ira Remsen, Constantin Fahlberg:• In 1879, Ira Remsen and Constantin Fahlberg, at work in a

laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, paused to eat. Fahlberg had neglected to wash his hands before the meal — which usually leads to a quick death for most chemists, but led to him noticing an oddly sweet flavor during his meal.

• Artificial sweetener! The duo published their findings together, but it was only Fahlberg's name that made it onto the (incredibly lucrative) patent, now found in pink packets at tables everywhere.

Pacemaker:

Pacemaker - Wilson Greatbatch:

• An assistant professor at the University of Buffalo thought he had ruined his project. Instead of picking a 10,000-ohm resistor out of a box to use on a heart-recording prototype, Wilson Greatbatch took the 1-megaohm variety. The resulting circuit produced a signal that sounded for 1.8 milliseconds, and then paused for a second — a dead ringer for the human heart.

• Greatbatch realized the precise current could regulate a pulse, overriding the imperfect heartbeat of the ill. Before this point, pacemakers were television-sized,cumbersome things that were temporarily attached to patients from the outside.

X-Rays - Wilhelm Roentgen

• In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen was performing a routine experiment involving cathode rays, when he noticed that a piece of fluorescent cardboard was lighting up from across the room.

• A thick screen had been placed between his cathode emitter and the radiated cardboard, proving that particles of light were passing through solid objects.

• Amazed, Roentgen quickly found that brilliant images could be produced with this incredible radiation — the first of their kind being a skeletal image of his wife's hand.

X-Rays:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Super Glue - Harry Coover:

Popsicles

Brandy:

$Thank you$