Patent disputes do not just occur over drugs or electronics. In fact, even the pencil, a simple product used by millions everyday, was at one time part of a court battle.
The first patent for attaching an eraser to a pencil was issued in 1858 to a man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hyman Lipman received patent number [...]

Patent Medicine is a term used to refer to concoctions popular in the 18th and 19th century which were advertised to cure almost every disease. Patent Medicine is actually an incorrect name though. Most of these products were trademarked but never patented. The process of patenting a product requires full disclosure of a medicine’s ingredients. [...]

In 1943, Richard James, a naval engineer stationed at the shipyard in Philadelphia, was working on an anti-vibration device for ship instruments. Part of the device involved high-tension springs. Richard accidentally knocked one of the springs off of a shelf. He watched as the spring kept moving, walking and flip-flopping after it hit the [...]

Thomas Adams, a photographer, glassmaker and hopeful inventor had an infamous Mexican exile as a houseguest at his home in Staten Island, New York. Mexican General Santa Anna was staying with him. Santa Anna introduced Adams to chicle which is made from the sap of the sapodilla tree. The general was hoping to sell the [...]

Webster’s dictionary defines serendipity as the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for. Accidental discoveries have happened in all fields and disciplines. Some great advancements in medicine have been the product of serendipity. Nitrous oxide as an anesthetic, rubber gloves to control infections and insulin are among these discoveries:
Nitrous Oxide [...]

Richard H. Hollingshead, Jr. is credited with the invention of the Drive-in Movie Theatre. Hollingshead’s position as the sales manager for Whiz Auto Products Company was not very interesting and he set out to challenge himself. While studying American culture, Richard discovered that while Americans would never give up going to the movies it was [...]

Margaret Knight is credited with over 90 different inventions and she received 26 patents in her lifetime. Her patents included textile and shoe-making machinery, domestic devices, and an automobile engine. She received her first patent at the age of 30 but was inventing her entire life.
Ms. Knight’s first invention was at the age of 12, [...]

Edward Jenner’s discovery is considered to have saved more lives than the work of any other man. Edward Jenner’s great gift to the world was his vaccination for smallpox. Before Jenner’s work with the disease, smallpox was an extremely deadly illness. The disease killed one in three of those who caught it. Those who were [...]

At the age of 3, Louis Braille accidentally poked himself in the eye with a stitching awl from his father’s workshop. The original injury was not very serious, but Louis went blind when the eye later became infected. That trauma then lead to the young boy going blind in his other eye, too.
At 10, Braille [...]

Well, for starters, all three were invented by accident.
It’s pretty amazing that these, like many other inventions, are the byproducts of a mistake or have uses that were not the original intention. Nonetheless they are now some of the most well known, popular and sometimes very important inventions.