Did You Know?

Knock on Wood
In the 1700s, paper was made from old clothes and scraps of linens, creating a curious shortage of rags. Then naturalist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur took a walk through the woods and noticed a wasp’s nest that was made out of paper that came from wood. His observation forever changed the way paper is made and allowed production to keep up with demand.

Catch a Wave
Percy LeBaron Spencer knew something was happening when the candy bar he tucked into his pocket began to melt while he was testing a new magnetron tube. But instead of being disappointed, he was delighted at the possibility of a new discovery: Radar waves emanating from the tube could warm and even cook food. Thus was born the first microwave oven—200 million units of which now fill homes worldwide.

Milky Magic
As a chemist for DuPont, Stephanie Kwolek was charged with creating life-changing high-performance fibers. Her big break came when a polymer solution she was working on turned cloudy instead of clear and she discovered that its molecules were unusually straight—they should have been slumped like wet noodles. But Kwolek suspected that would make the fiber stronger. She was right. The fiber, known today as Kevlar, is five times stronger than steel. It’s used in hundreds of products like skis and skateboards but is most famous for saving thousands of lives in bulletproof vests.

Golden Rice
Each year, hundreds of thousands of people in poor and developing countries go blind, most from a severe deficiency of vitamin A. But many of those cases might be eliminated with “golden rice,” a grain enhanced with the vitamin that was engineered by scientists and distributed for free to farmers in affected areas. The same biotechnology that created golden rice may also someday lead to crops with other life-saving vitamins and minerals, including iron and amino acids.

Bee Nice
Marla Spivak was worried when almost half of the honeybees in North America were killed by blood-sucking mites. Bees may be a bother, but they also pollinate most of the country’s agricultural crops and the alfalfa and clover dairy cows eat. So Spivak started breeding queen bees that could produce workers able to remove mite-infested pupae from the hives. Now, beekeepers using those queens say their bees are back.

Stick ’em Up
Spence Silver didn’t know what to do with the new glue he had created. It wasn’t super sticky, didn’t dry well, and pulled apart easily. He tried spraying it on a bulletin board, so that papers could be peeled off later, but no one wanted that idea. Then Arthur Fry, a fellow chemist at 3M, decided that Silver’s glue on small slips of paper could help keep his place in his hymnal. Thus was born Post-it Notes, one of the most popular office products in the world.

No Cheese Needed
The scientists working at the Stanford Research Institute knew what they wanted: a device that would help people interact more effectively with their computers. They knew the devices being used—joysticks and light pens—weren’t efficient enough. So they made a list of characteristics they needed and worked to create a new device: the mouse, so named because it was small and had a “tail,” the cord connecting it to the computer.