Gallery: Whoops! The 10 Greatest (Accidental) Inventions of All Time

Is it cyanoacrylate, or cyanacrylate? The second time you say it, its spelled cyanacrylate.

You forgot: Alexander Graham Bell was trying to make a hearing aid for his wife and instead accidentally ended up making the Telephone.

I would also like to include a notable mention to my company's founder, Earl Bakken (Founder, Medtronic). He invented the world's first wearable pacemaker (in fact, our company was involved in the development of the implantable pacemaker as well and our name can be seen on the pictured IPG). (Go Minneapolis!)

@yimmer1: AGB did not invent the telephone, he stole the idea from a patent by Antonio Meucci while working in the patent office. Meucci could not afford the fee to continue the filing of the patent, so Bell studied it, copied the method, and built his own prototype; thus, he won his place in history as the first person to *patent* the telephone, and one of the great thieves of fame and intellectual property.

Thomas Edison accidentally invented the rectifier and the amplifier, though he didn't know it, nor had any idea of what he could do with them.

He showed his gadgets to Marconi, who figured out uses for both of them.

screw you guys im buying a slinky and some play doh and making a slinking stair descending doh shooting toy of childish doom.

Can I invent something accidentally, to silence techno-wads who look for tiny errors in everything they read or watch? Big picture, cyanoacoalyte hater.