hey, all. i've had these sitting in the word document for my ASB ATL for a long time now, unable to decide what to do with them. i thought i'd ask my fellow AH.commers for their opinions, and couldn't think of any better place to post this (i figure it counts since some of the potential PODs are pre-1900)
anyway, a while back i copied down some entries from teh real-life section of TV Tropes' "Accidental Discovery" page in order to gradually whittle it down and come up with ideas for what could potentially be included as side divergences ITTL. i eliminated some because i figured they were too important to what i'm going for with the TL to be excluded, but there's several others. any help on figuring out what could make for interesting divergences from OTL because of these, and what their long-term consequences could be?
the possible ideas, listed in timeline format, are:
-- 1608: Hans Lippershey compares a couple of lenses with one behind the other and discovers the principle of the telescope
-- 1839: Charles Goodyear (apparently) discovers vulcanized rubber when he accidentally drops a rubber concoction on a hot stove
-- 1853: George Crum invents potato chips because an unhappy customer keeps sending his fried potatoes back for not being crispy enough
-- 1878: Constantin Fahlberg forgets to wash his hands before lunch after spilling a chemical on his hands and discovers saccharin when it makes teh bread he's eating taste unusually sweet
-- 1928: Alexnader Fleming discovers penicillin when he finds his lab dirty after coming back from a vacation and notices a fungus culture he had left behind that had killed all the bacteria surrounding it
-- 1938: Roy Plunkett accidentally invents Teflon while trying to devise a safer refrigerant to be used in the average home
-- 1938: Albert Hofmann accidentally invents and experiences LSD while researching lysergic acid derivatives
-- 1939-1945: Percy Spencer notices a candy bar in his pocket melting when he walks in front of a magnetron and comes up with the idea for the microwave oven
-- 1941: Georges de Mestral notices the thorny hooks on burrs after a hunting trip and comes up with the idea of velcro
-- 1943: Richard James comes up with the Slinky while trying to develop a spring that would support and stabilize sensitive equipment on ships and one of the springs accidentally falls off a shelf
-- 1955: Joseph and Noah McVicker accidentally create Play-Doh while trying to make a wallpaper cleaner