Mistakes

"We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery."
Samuel Smiles


It is amazing to learn about all the inventions and scientific discoveries that happened because someone made a mistake. Christopher Columbus made a big mistake when he sailed to America; he thought he was sailing to the Orient. Coca Cola was originally intended to be a medicine. Goodyear was looking for a way to make rubber so that it didn't melt if it got too hot or shatter if it got to cold. It wasn't until, according to legend, he accidently dropped a blob of rubber and sulfur on a hot stove that he found something that would work.

Another example is vaccination. In 1879, Louis Pasteur inoculated some chickens with cholera bacteria. It was supposed to kill them, but Pasteur or one of his assistants had accidentally used a culture from an old jar and the chickens merely got sick and recovered. Later, Pasteur inoculated them again with a fresh culture that he knew to be virulent, and the chickens didn't even get sick. He had accidently discovered the principle of vaccination.

Potato chips were invented when one day a restaurant customer sent back his plate of potatoes several times. He kept asking that the potatoes be cut thinner and fried longer. The chef had a bad temper, and decided to get even. He sliced the potatoes very thin, fried them until they were crisps, and salted them. He was sure the guest would hate them. The potatos were delivered back to the table and much to everyone’s surprise the customer was very happy and asked for more.

Many discoveries have been made while the scientist was looking for the answer to another problem. You might say that they failed, since they didn't find an answer to their original problem. But in their failure, they learned something that changed the world.

Never be afraid of making mistakes. If nobody had made a mistake in the past, the world would have missed a lot of great discoveries. We often find out what will do by finding out what will not do. We often can use our mistakes to solve other problems that we hadn't previously considered, provided that we are paying attention instead of worrying about failing.

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