The Accidental Inventions That We’re All Grateful For

We’ve seen more than one accidental inventions come out of 3M; apparently it’s a great company when you want to develop something other than what you expected! One of the inventions to come out of that company is Scotchgard, which can be used to protect and waterproof fabrics.

What chemist Patsy Sherman was actually trying to develop was rubber compounds that would be used on planes. But when she dropped some of compound she was working on onto her shoe, she eventually came to realize that the part of her shoe that had the compound on it was repelling stains much better than the rest. She fiddled with her compound and made the Scotchguard now used the world over.