Human innovation sure is amazing. We’ve managed to figure out how to count, tell time, use (and abuse) nature’s resources to our advantage, and develop complex social structures… so complex that it boggles the mind to look back and try to imagine how we did it. Much like the way looking at your nose in the mirror for too long will make you feel like a surreal assortment of fleshy blobs, thinking about our longest-unquestioned customs will make you wonder just how our ancestors decided on that over the generations.
But who has the patience to think about such existential questions? Not you, you may think as you get up to get a snack, contemplating the impressive variety of salad toppings, sandwich fillings and sweets we’ve also managed to come up with as a civilization.
Here are some tweets cursing and praising the ingenuity of the "inventors" of the simplest concepts we take for granted. There may not be much historical accuracy to be found here, but sometimes it’s easier to blame some hypothetical guy.
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Autocorrect is always ducking around with us, may it's inventor rust in peas.
There are a lot of funny stories throughout history of how these old inventions came about, but it’s hard to tell which ones are rumors and which ones are true sometimes. While there’s a widespread legend that potato chips were accidentally invented in 1853 by a cook who felt like he couldn’t please a customer who demanded improbably thin fries and sent out what he thought were ruined crisps in frustration, investigation of the historic restaurant that claims this legend turns up some inconsistencies.
Historians did manage to find a New York Herald article praising an unidentified woman who worked at the restaurant and had a knack for frying potatoes a few years earlier than that, so it may be more likely that this great idea came to a potato pioneer who knew exactly what she was doing.
Mmmmm a bloody Mary with some salt, Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco is soooooo good
Thomas Midgley Jr. Invented leaded petrol and CFCs in fridges/aerosols. It would be interesting if you could quantify his impact on our world.
With cooking i always imagine someone accidentally dropped something in the fire/water/stood on some grains, tasted it and was like mmm!
Its called I wish this really tough meat was edible, lets boil it to death and try to make it palatable by adding potatoes and other veg
I know this isn’t an invention but I have always wondered how and why someone thought that making coffee from the beans a civet shits out is a brilliant idea and then the person who decided to make it the most expensive coffee in the world. And there are people that actually pay for that s**t.
Back in the eighteenth century when Sumatra and Java were part of the Dutch colonial empire in the East Indies, Arabica coffee was introduced as a cash crop, using plants brought in from the Arabian Peninsula. The Dutch plantation owners forbid the indigenous workers from sampling the fruits of their labor. But the locals noticed that the palm civet also ate the coffee cherries that they were harvesting, and that the coffee beans appeared in the animals’ excrement seemingly unchanged. The locals then cleaned and roasted the beans, and began to brew their own coffee from them. Eventually, the plantation owners caught wind of the local’s superior brew, tried it, and were swayed that it was indeed the better coffee. https://theexoticbean.com/blog/coffee-types/history-kopi-luwak-coffee-from-civets/
Load More Replies...Guy who invented bandaids: This finger is cut, maybe infected, so let's go for a trifecta and cut off all circulation to the blood as well.
they're more to contain the mess than about the wound.
Load More Replies...WAIT... why are we so sure these are all guys inventing this stuff??? ;) (just poking the bear)
Historically, probably. Yeah or at least some dude took credit for it (often times not even maliciously, but because it wouldn't have been taken seriously if people found out that a woman invented it. Female rights have come a LONG way, thankfully).
Load More Replies...I know this isn’t an invention but I have always wondered how and why someone thought that making coffee from the beans a civet shits out is a brilliant idea and then the person who decided to make it the most expensive coffee in the world. And there are people that actually pay for that s**t.
Back in the eighteenth century when Sumatra and Java were part of the Dutch colonial empire in the East Indies, Arabica coffee was introduced as a cash crop, using plants brought in from the Arabian Peninsula. The Dutch plantation owners forbid the indigenous workers from sampling the fruits of their labor. But the locals noticed that the palm civet also ate the coffee cherries that they were harvesting, and that the coffee beans appeared in the animals’ excrement seemingly unchanged. The locals then cleaned and roasted the beans, and began to brew their own coffee from them. Eventually, the plantation owners caught wind of the local’s superior brew, tried it, and were swayed that it was indeed the better coffee. https://theexoticbean.com/blog/coffee-types/history-kopi-luwak-coffee-from-civets/
Load More Replies...Guy who invented bandaids: This finger is cut, maybe infected, so let's go for a trifecta and cut off all circulation to the blood as well.
they're more to contain the mess than about the wound.
Load More Replies...WAIT... why are we so sure these are all guys inventing this stuff??? ;) (just poking the bear)
Historically, probably. Yeah or at least some dude took credit for it (often times not even maliciously, but because it wouldn't have been taken seriously if people found out that a woman invented it. Female rights have come a LONG way, thankfully).
Load More Replies...