Top 5 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World
#2 Radioactivity
Accident causer: Henri Becquerel
In 1896, intrigued by Roentgen’s X-Ray discovery, French Scientist Henri Becquerel was working on an experiment that involved a uranium-enriched crystal. He needed to expose the crystal to sunlight, which he believed causes the crystal to burn its image on a photographic plate. But Becquerel was in the middle of a very cloudy, wintery season and decided to wrap up all his equipments with a cloth and left them in his drawer. When the scientist returned to his experiment, he discovered that the uranium crystal had come in contact with the photographic plate and had left a burned image on the plate. And all these happened when they were kept in a darkened drawer! This lead to the discovery of radioactivity whose research was further carried out by the scientist-couple: Pierre and Marie Curie. These radioactive elements have harnessed the power for today’s nuclear weaponry.
