How Everyday Accidents Shaped the World’s Most Useful Inventions

Modern lab safety would not recommend this story. Constantin Fahlberg had been working with coal tar derivatives in the late 1870s when he noticed an unexpected sweetness while eating. The taste seemed to be on his hands, which meant something from the laboratory had followed him to the table. Rather than shrugging it off, he traced the sweetness back to the compounds he had handled. That investigation led to saccharin, one of the first artificial sweeteners.