‘What’s an invention that turned out to be perfect for a completely different use?’ – 22 items with applications that would definitely have surprised their inventors

If you’d made inventing something your life’s work, and then it turned out that people successfully used it for a different purpose than you’d intended, would you mind? It’s hard to say, but a lot probably depends if you’d made a lot of money out if it regardless. They’ve been chatting about things that are accidentally useful for other purposes on the AskUK subreddit after user volodymyroquai asked this:

What’s an invention that turned out to be perfect for a completely different use case? I just think of tennis balls being just about the perfect dog toy available. Made me wonder what other things out there make for good alternative uses.

Lots of people had thoughts on excellent alternative uses for everyday items, like these…

1.

‘Viagra originally created for heart conditions, you can imagine the surprise when in fact it just gave a hard condition instead.’
–tradegreek

2.

‘Sewing kit tins can also be used to hold biscuits.’
–SomeHSomeE

3.

‘When developing radar, a microwave emitter accidentally melted some chocolate. The guy started messing with it, and realised microwave radiation had a brilliant place in heating food.

I also like the Post-It note history, where the glue was meant to be super strong but came out basically useless. They tried to market it as useful to aerospace but got nowhere, then a guy started using it to ‘pin’ notes up and the rest is history.’
–Glittering_Copy8907

4.

‘Rowing machine. The handles are perfect for drying a pair of socks on each. Not a single regret, honestly.’
–ahoneybadger3

5.

‘Pull up station too. I can get two pairs of trousers, two pairs of boxers, and a t-shirt and four pairs of socks drying on that thing.’
–ahoneybadger3

6.

‘Ozempic is the winner by far. It was being developed to treat type 2 diabetes and during testing they discovered their diabetics were losing a lot of weight.’
–Boldboy72

7.

‘Obligatory mention of the Pringles hack: the lid from a tube of Pringles fits a Gu pot like they were designed to do it. So you can actually use them as useful containers too for things like paper clips or something.’
–SuzLouA

8.

”Skin So soft’ moisturising spray. Kept bugs away from me (95% reduction in bites) and out of my campervan, worked better than any over the counter bug repellent, and soothed sunburn.’
–PuzzleheadedFold503

9.

‘The textured plastic bubble wallpaper invented by Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes didn’t catch on until someone had the idea to use it for wrapping fragile items instead.’
–GaryJM

10.

‘Pencils. How else were you going to wind the tape back into a cassette?’
–Und3adShr3d

11.

‘Tennis balls are also great for beating life back into a wet down jacket when it’s in the tumble drier. And they make a nice little hat for your tow bar.’
–chemo92