If you ever watch life hack videos on YouTube, you know that people are constantly finding cool new ways to do things. Sometimes that means taking an already existing tool or item and adapting it to a new purpose that makes it even better. This adaptability has a long history. Sometimes people invent a thing for one purpose and it just turns out to be better suited for something else entirely. With that in mind, let’s check out the unexpected reasons why 10 pretty common things were invented.
10. Air Conditioning Was Invented to Help Ink Dry Better
On a brutal summer day we can all appreciate just how useful air conditioning is. Its widespread use has been linked to a serious decline in heat related deaths over the last 60 years. It really is a powerful and important invention that many people are thankful to have. And to think it was invented to do nothing more than speed the process of ink drying.
The original design that Willis Carrier came up with in 1902 was meant to control the humidity in a Brooklyn printing shop. High heat and humidity caused their ink to blot and run. Carrier’s cooling system dropped the temperature, allowing the ink to dry fast and clean. The shop owner apparently loved it, and as well he should have.
Carrier realized he had a solid idea on his hands and moved it well beyond the print shop and drying ink. But had it not been for that printing shop, who knows if or when he would have perfected his design.
9. Candy Land was Invented to Cheer Up Kids in Polio Wards
Candy Land is one of those board games like Monopoly and Scrabble that seems to have been around forever. And while it comes across as a fun, harmless game for kids, the true story behind it is much sadder than you’d guess from all the bright colors and cheery themes. Candy Land was originally designed to help distract and entertain kids in polio wards.
Inventor Eleanor Abbot had endured polio herself, so she knew firsthand how isolated kids in polio wards were. The game hit the market in 1949 and Abbot put almost all the royalties she made back into buying school supplies and other equipment for kids in need. To date, over 50 million copies have been sold.
8. The Massive Volcanic Eruption of 1815 Led to Bicycles
Sometimes an invention has been around so long or seems so obvious we don’t really ask why it was invented. But have you ever wondered why we have bicycles? Their origins are remarkable and extremely unlikely.
To understand the bicycle, you need to go back to a very specific day in 1815. On July 15 of that year, Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia. That eruption had worldwide implications and led to what some called the Year Without a Summer in 1816, thanks to the sheer mass of debris that Tambora belched into the atmosphere. It lowered worldwide temperatures by up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Crops died, and people starved during the Year Without a Summer. This also had a profound effect on horses in Europe. The horse was the primary mode of transportation back then. Many starved just like their owners. Others were eaten by their owners. This inspired Baron Karl Von Drais to invent his running machine, a precursor to the bicycle that didn’t have pedals. It could serve as a replacement for horses to get you around and, of course, it could never starve.
The running machine inspired design improvements and, in time, became the bicycle. Which, if not for a global catastrophe and volcanic winter, may have never been.
7. Money Was Invented as a Way to Understand People’s Debts
Have you ever wondered what came first, money or debt? Probably not, but when you think about it, debt seems like the right answer, doesn’t it? People traded all kinds of goods and services before anyone was putting faces on coins and paper. In fact, money was invented to keep track of people’s debts.
The history of money is very old. About as old as society, which makes sense. You can trace it back a good 40,000 years. The idea that we had a barter system before money isn’t anthropologically correct. If you’re a chicken farmer and all you have are chickens, how would you barter with anyone who didn’t want a chicken? What if everyone had a chicken already? A different method of transaction had to exist. Anthropologists have never discovered a historical record of barter societies like this existing. Money systems have actually always existed based on debt.
Old legal documents had values for everything, even limbs lost in fights. Everything had a value owed if it was lost or damaged. Money was invented as a way to account for what you needed to pay someone in a way that was equitable and understandable. If 10 chickens were worth one cow, that would be a reasonable barter transaction. But if you had no chickens and knew each was also worth one silver, then 10 silver is worth a cow. This way no one could argue over the value of anything in a transaction because it was established and known. Kind of like, “You owe me 10 silver for that cow, so I don’t have to kill you for ripping me off.”
6. Roller Coasters Were Invented to Distract Americans From Sin
Is anything more exhilarating or terrifying than a roller coaster, depending on your perspective? While they’re faster and more complex than ever these days, they were not designed with screams and fear in mind. Quite the opposite, in fact. LaMarcus Adna Thompson, the inventor of the roller coaster, intended them to keep you on the straight and narrow and away from sinful temptations like drinking and gambling.
It was back in 1884 in Indiana when Thompson, a devout Christian, thought the world was going to hell in a handbasket. He felt brothels and saloons were sinful and felt moved to give the world wholesome entertainment. After a trip to a coal mining town, he was inspired by those coal mining cars to create a roller coaster called the Switchback Gravity Railway on Coney Island, and the rest is history.
5. The Webcam was Invented to Watch Coffee
Cameras are everywhere these days, and we take for granted that any cellphone or laptop is going to have one installed. Once upon a time, however, the idea of a webcam was still pretty novel. You had to go out and buy one specifically for the job and then, of course, what do you do with it? Video chat was a possibility, even in the olden days of the internet, but that was never the original purpose of the webcam.
Head way back to 1991, when no one had the internet in their homes. Researchers in the Cambridge University computer lab were sharing a single coffee pot, and it emptied fast. People often found themselves smelling a fresh brewed pot only to arrive and find it all gone already. So one of the researchers put a camera on the pot and gave it its own dedicated computer to monitor it. That way people could see if there was coffee or not. And the first webcam in history was born, as a coffee monitoring system.
4. Candy Canes May Have Been Invented to Shut up Choir Boys
Take all of this sweet entry with a grain of salt because the history of candy canes is even more twisted than the ribbon of color running down this seasonal treat. It seems that no one can confirm beyond a doubt the true origin of the candy, but there are a few stories that are likelier than others. One of them states that the candy was not made so much as a decoration for your Christmas tree, but to keep choir boys quiet and distracted during church.
The candy has been around for well over 300 years, part of the reason its origins are so obscure. Candy records from back in the day were not pressing concerns, it seems. Original canes were not curved, however, nor were they peppermint. They were just sugar sticks. It was said the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany gave them their trademark bend in 1670 and handed them out to children. A tweak to the story says it wasn’t all children, just the kids in the choir, to stop them from being fidgety.
3. Chocolate Milk Was Popularized in Europe as Medicine
A third of Americans say they’d drink chocolate milk every day if they could, while 6% actually do. While that doesn’t sound like the healthiest thing in the world, it’s not without historical precedent. Chocolate milk was introduced to the world as medicine.
In 1687, Hans Sloane traveled to Jamaica and spent over a year there. He wrote of the many plants he sampled, including cacao, which Brits had yet to experience. Sloane’s experience was unpleasant – a local brew made of cocoa and water that he apparently hated. But when he played with the recipe and used milk and sugar, it turned out pretty well.
Naturally Sloane marketed his new concoction as medicine because it seems like every beverage invented before 1980 was sold that way by someone. (More on that in a bit.) It’s worth noting that Sloane didn’t actually invent this, as Jamaicans also made it with milk; it just seems like Sloane never tried that. But he did popularize it in Europe, and he did sell it with shady medicinal claims.
2. Braille was Adapted From a System to Allow Soldiers to Read in the Dark
Braille changed the world for the blind and hard of seeing, allowing them to read again and experience so much that those who see take for granted. Inventor Louis Braille deserves a lot of credit for that, but while he refined the system that bears his name, it wasn’t technically his invention alone. For that, you need to go back a little earlier to Charles Barbier, a soldier in Napoleon’s army. It was Barbier’s night writing system that inspired Braille, and it wasn’t meant to allow the blind to read. Instead, it was meant to allow soldiers to communicate without being shot.
Prior to Barbier, if soldiers in a battle were trying to read messages at night, they’d need to do so by lantern light. You don’t need to be a military expert to know that if you spark up a lantern on a battlefield at night, you’re making a big mistake. Barbier devised a way for soldiers to read messages without making themselves targets.
Barbier came up with a grid system that soldiers could memorize. Sections of the grind represented certain letters so that if a raised dot was felt in a certain section, the reader would know what letter it represented. A whole message could be relayed in this way and no one had to be shot by torchlight.
1. Coca Cola was Invented as a Cure for Morphine Addiction
The story of Coca-Cola once including cocaine in the recipe is fairly well known. Maybe the people at the time didn’t know or didn’t care to not make it with cocaine, right? After all, cocaine was a pretty common medicine for years and was included in lots of other products as well. But why?
Coca-Cola wasn’t just a drink to get you high as a kite. It was made with a purpose and that was, in fact, medicinal. Coca-Cola was supposed to get you off morphine.
John Pemberton was the doctor who invented Coca-Cola and had suffered a pretty bad morphine addiction himself. Pemberton was a Confederate soldier during the war and must have sustained some injuries. He began taking morphine to control the pain but soon realized the morphine had become its own problem. So he created what he called French Wine Coca to help wean himself off morphine. This sophisticated beverage was wine, cocaine, and kola nuts. He sold it claiming it could cure damn near anything.
When Atlanta became a dry county in 1886, Pemberton dropped the wine and marketed his new beverage as a “temperance drink.” Same great cocaine taste, but now alcohol free. He called it Coca-Cola.