How Things Are Invented

Invention is not some magical process. It is full of chance, coincidence, and energy from the right places and at the right times.

Here is the real story of an invention that totally changed the world.

The vaccine, which we used nowadays, is one of those inventions that changed the world.

This story can be mentioned in textbook like this:

When it was needed to shield people from smallpox, the first vaccine was creates . A few hundred years later, researchers discover a virus, use a large machine to capture its image, sequence its genome, insert a portion of it into mRNA, load it into a syringe, and administer the dose to everyone.

That is a neat little narrative about a bright young man whose concept just kept getting better and better. And now that we are here, the world has changed from the day before.

Sounds rather nice; however, you are going to enjoy the next version even more since it turns out that we can't obtain mRNA vaccines without soda water, and we can't obtain that without creating the battery, which we can't obtain without using cows.

Our story starts here.

You see, getting smallpox was the worst thing to do in eighteenth-century Europe. It was awful that smallpox was so widespread. Huge number of adult Europeans contracted smallpox, and 10% of those cases resulted in death. With no notion what to do, English doctors began stabbing people. They would make a cut in a healthy person's skin after dipping a knife into a smallpox blister and extracting some pus.

The idea was to contract a mild case of smallpox, get better, and then receive a vaccination that would protect you from getting it again. The danger was that you might also contract smallpox and pass away.

There was a young man that after being stabbed with smallpox pus, he fell quite ill, yet he survived and went on to become a scientist; however, the man was interested in birds, not smallpox cures. He came up with the theory that diseases may spread from animals to humans because his research on animals showed him that animals and human beings shared many biological and medical characteristics. Thus, animals might aid in the fight against illness.

It has been understood that disease might be a really lethal weapon, which is why a leader would immunize every soldier in his army against smallpox. It is believed that one leader had tried to kill the troops via malaria instead of using gunfire, so he had dumped mosquitoes on the certain countryside.

The leader had learned about malaria where he instituted a rule prohibiting his soldiers from going into bad-smelling areas, such as swamps, because, at the time, people believed that foul smells, not mosquitoes, were the cause of malaria.

Mal Aria, which means foul air in Italian, was actually found in muddy, moist wetlands along with mosquitoes.

A way to create rifle barrels from a single iron piece was discovered that was somewhat more accurate and wouldn't blow up.

There was a one who was simply gas-obsessed at this point. In addition to the discovery of oxygen, he created a device that could generate electric sparks to determine whether a gas was combustible.

As methane causes explosions, the marsh gas was ignited , which is what happened; however, a method to store power for later use was conducted. Thus, a method of storing energy that he named the voltaic pile was created.

Another scientists of those legendary lone genius types came into view. He named a gadget that stores electricity more eloquently: a battery. Thus, smallpox-hating a cow inspires vaccinations creation.

The army is strengthened by vaccination. This fight results in the development of newer, more effective cannons and generates significant profits for the gasman, who uses them to build his spark device.

This tiny invention is the ideal illustration of how scientific breakthroughs are far more convoluted than miraculous.

Our next stop on the route to the contemporary vaccination is bubbles, not batteries.

It was seen that there was a layer of gas above the fermentation vats in between pints. Furthermore, both candles and mice were extinguished if they were held in the gas. It was observed that the water became frothy and a wonderful little refresher when poured from glass to glass in the presence of this mystery gas. A frothy beverage soda water with carbon dioxide was invented. Later, mineral-infused spring water from the ideal location was thought to be the panacea for all ailments. The issue was that a large portion of that spring water tasted like pure putrid waste. So, the carbonated soda water was a big plus. An inventor discovered a way to mass produce this new elixir.

There were essentially just three methods to take medicine back then. It could be ingested, used topically, or inserted; however, it was discovered how to inject morphine directly into a muscle by rolling two extremely thin pieces of metal into a pointed tube. Then, a physician modified that hollow needle to include a syringe, converting it into a delivery system for any medication that could not go in this way or that. This is yet another incredibly surprising connection which was carbonated water and the hypodermic needle.

Many of these modern scientific gadgets, such as telephones, phonographs, and syringes, were on show, but this, the focal point of the fair, the Eiffel Tower, overshadowed them all. The Eiffel Tower was the world's tallest man-made building at the time. Did you know that its intended lifespan was just to be 20 years? Its designer transformed it into a vital scientific research facility.

Imagine that during World War I, the wireless telegraph station atop the Eiffel Tower was providing with access to information on the plans of the enemy. It was demonstrated how light appeared to do this strange thing where it came in what he called "quanta," or bits or particles. Inspired by it, it was demonstrated that minuscule particles, such as electrons, can exhibit both particle and wave properties at different moments. It provided scientists with a completely new perspective on light.

By subjecting scientists to electron waves that are roughly a thousand times shorter than visible light, the electron microscope allowed them to observe incredibly small objects. Thanks to all those incidents, we now have an electron microscope.

This is one of those moments in our narrative where a number of oddities join together to take us in a really surprising and lovely new directions.

After that, DNA was developed; however, it was realized that if there were an RNA intermediate molecule that may act as a sort of messenger between the production of proteins and DNA. The existence of messenger RNA was verified. Additionally, the three-letter code used to write the protein instructions found on mRNA was demonstrated.

At last, we possess all the scientific components required to create an mRNA vaccine. We have the idea of immunization, the electron microscope, the hypodermic needle, and mRNA.

This is the process of invention. Without all those scientists and events and everyday people following their passions, we would not have been able to accomplish this. That list of relationships is quite lengthy. Many of them are, at the very least, quite fortunate; it would have been difficult to foresee any of that, yet it did occur.

That is the process of innovation. This idea of the lone genius is not simply untrue. It can discourage individuals like you and me from pursuing our curiosity to come up with original answers to issues, particularly if we don't think we're brilliant enough.

In actuality, though, it was simply doing that—keeping an open mind to the possibility of learning something new when and from wherever—that made the difference for every individual on this list. Curiosity appears like that.

The worst aspect of the invention myth, in my opinion, is how it presents science as proceeding linearly from concept to genius to solution; however, true innovation isn't linear; rather, it entails a number of concepts looping in and out of one another and connecting in a variety of ambiguous ways until the correct notions finally link in the right way. Precisely, it did due to factors like serendipity and culture. Although you can never predict these things, you can prepare yourself for the possibility of them occurring.