This is the time of year when many people make New Year’s Resolutions.
There’s a name for those people: Optimists!
Resolutions are for not for me — either because I am incorrigible, or else already perfect — definitely one of those two.
Instead, this year I am focusing on people who made mistakes, but who, rather than beat themselves up, actually ended up with something better.
Take Alexander Fleming.
Before his discovery of penicillin, a splinter or a scrape wasn’t just an annoyance; the ensuing infection could kill you. (This is one of many reasons why time travel has little allure for me.)
In 1928, Fleming was a medical researcher in London, growing cultures of Staphylococcus bacteria in petri dishes.
One day, he came across a dish whose culture had a bare spot where the culture had failed to grow.
I would have cursed about “another experiment ruined,” and probably tossed the whole thing out. But not Fleming.
Somehow, he realized that instead of marking a failure, that clear spot needed closer study. And when he did, he saw that in the middle of the clearing sat a tiny bit of mold — probably something that had fallen in when the dish was left uncovered by mistake.
Fleming’s great insight was to realize that, if this tiny bit of mold could kill Staphylococcus bacteria, in an area many times its own size, then maybe it could be useful against bacteria in the human body.
Which is just exactly what penicillin eventually did.
Charles Goodyear’s discovery of vulcanized rubber was more accidental.
He had spent all of the 1830s (and all of his money) trying to make the sap of the rubber plant useful — but it remained too brittle in cold temperatures, and too sticky in hot ones.
But one winter day, mixing it with sulphur, Goodyear dropped a bit on his hot kitchen stove…and noticed that instead of burning up, it merely charred a little.
When he picked it up, it wasn’t sticky, but flexible. Then he put it outside overnight, in bitter cold — and it was still flexible!
He named the successful process “vulcanization” after Vulcan, Roman god of fire … and it remains useful to this day.
The development of Ivory Soap required teamwork.
James and David Gamble were in the soap-making business, in 1879.
But one day, one of their workers went to lunch, accidentally leaving a stirring machine going, with a batch still in it.
When he returned, feeling no desire to call attention to his mistake, he proceeded to package and ship the soap bars, as usual.
He might have gotten away with it, too — except letters started pouring in to the Gamble brothers, asking for more of that wonderful soap that didn’t get lost in the bath because it always floated to the top!
In this case, the insight was supplied by happy customers —but at least the Gambles were smart enough to capitalize on it.
Post-it Notes were the result of what you would have to call a failure.
Spencer Silver, of 3M Corporation’s research lab, was trying to develop some strong adhesives, in 1970, when he developed one that was far too weak, instead. He put it aside.
Four years later, his colleague Arthur Fry was singing with his church choir, trying to mark his hymnal pages with slips of paper — which kept falling out of his book.
If only there were some kind of adhesive, he thought, that was strong enough to keep the markers in place temporarily, but weak enough not to mark the book when they were removed.
That’s when he remembered Silver’s not-good-enough adhesive, and the Post-it note was born.
My favorite story is another from the 3M lab, this time in the 1950’s.
That’s where Patsy Sherman and Samuel Smith were working with fluorochemicals when something spilled on a lab assistant’s new tennis shoe. Luckily it didn’t injure anyone or damage anything, but they tried to get it off the shoe anyway — with no success.
Over time, that shoe got dingier and dirtier— except where the chemical had spilled. That spot stayed as bright as ever.
That’s when Smith and Sherman realized that they had, not an accident, but a substance that could be turned into Scotchgard fabric protectant.
The moral of the story here is simple: Perfection is overrated. Being observant, and seeing things in a new way, is much more valuable. Especially since you’re not going to be perfect, anyway.
Here’s wishing us all a Happy, Healthy and Imperfect New Year.
