Goofs & Great Inventions
Lost Cities, Lost Treasure
1
In 1871, an adventurer names Heinrich Schliemann started digging in the
ground of a Turkish city, seeking the lost land of Troy. Schliemann, a businessman and scholar, was
born in Germany in 1822. As a young man he dreamed of discovering the treasures
of the ancient world, and even made a plan for it when he was nine years old.
2
His youthful sense of adventure eventually brought him to California,
where he made a fortune in the gold rush.
With his profits, he began his second career in archaeology.
3
Archaeology was still a young science in the 1800s. In fact, it was
hardly a science at all. The promise of treasure and adventure in foreign lands
attracted people like Schliemann. Like a lot of treasure hunters, Schliemann
was smart, curious—and hungry for gold or fame. On the other hand, he loved
ancient cultures, especially Greek culture. He loved learning and traveling. By
the end of his life, he spoke 13 languages, including his native German. He
loved Greek history and culture so much that he and his wife Sophia named their
children Agamemnon and Andromache.
4
There was another, less likeable side to Schliemann. He has been
described as a trickster who didn’t always tell the truth. He was known for
changing or making up details in his stories of discovery. He wrote a thrilling
account of his experience in the San Francisco fire of 1849—even though he was
nowhere near San Francisco at the time. And as much as he loved antiquities and
learning, his love of attention and money were equally strong. They may have
been too strong in the end.
5
In 1868 he had been seeking the lost city of Troy for many years. He
found out that a British archaeologist name Frank Calvert owned part of a site
in Turkey. It was near the modern town of Canakkale. Calvert believed that
ancient Troy was founded at this site. He did not have the funds to dig or
discover for himself. Schliemann agreed to fund and share in the work.
6
Calvert was very different from Schliemann. He was self-taught, modest,
and liked to keep his discoveries quiet. He was serious about protecting the
artifacts he found. He did not have enough money of his own to carry out his
work. He had to rely on Schliemann’s funds. This proved disastrous for him, and
perhaps even worse for the remains of Troy.
7
By 1871, Schliemann had started digging up Troy his way. He was
convinced he knew exactly how far to dig, and how to get there. He had workers
open up huge trenches in the earth, shoveling out layers of debris and
artifacts that had lain undisturbed for centuries. Although he and Calvert both
discovered treasure, the damage done to the site was profound. Today,
archaeologists believe that the historic Troy that the Greek poet Homoer
described was in a layer much higher up. We will never know for sure.
8
Schliemann’s careless actions erased important clues to Troy’s past.
Schliemann took the credit for what was found, and Calvert’s contribution was
almost forgotten. Calvert’s family is still fighting to give him full credit
for finding ancient Troy. Schliemann is remembered not only as a great explorer
but also for being dishonest. Yet both men discovered great things at the
site: ancient axes, household items, and
jewels. Together, they did prove there had been an ancient city called Troy.
The gold and other precious items they found are now in the Pushkin Museum in
Moscow, Russia. Was the find worth the damage it caused to the site?
How a Melted Bar of Chocolate
Changed our Kitchens
9
Percy Spencer never set out to help you cook your dinner in only 5
minutes. All he did was carry a bar of chocolate in his pocket onto the factory
floor. What he discovered that day was more than how to get chocolate stains
out of your clothes. He discovered a completely new way to cook.
10
The events leading up to the most powerful melted candy in the world gives
us a clue to the kind of person Percy Spencer was. He was born in the town of
Howland, Maine in 1894. As a boy, he liked to tinker and discover how things
worked. His uncle was handy with machines, and taught Spencer a lot about them.
When a log hauler broke down outside their house, the young boy had fun
watching and helping while his uncle worked to fix the truck.
11
Percy went to work quite early to help support his family. By the time
he was 16 he was working full-time in a machine shop. He volunteered to be one
of three men who helped the machine shop convert to electrical power in 1910.
He had no real training at the time, but he decided to try. That experience
taught him everything he needed to be an electrician.
12
Imagine for a moment what that was like for young Percy Spencer. Today,
every year, computers are becoming faster and smaller. Touchscreen technology
is still very new. We have hardly begun to understand what else we can
discover. Imagine you are Percy Spencer in the brand-new world of electrical
engineering. So much to discover! And so many mistakes to make!
13
In everything he did from then on, Percy Spencer seemed to run toward
discovery and take the chance of making mistakes. He joined the navy to become
a telegraph operator. Once again he did not know much about this type of work.
He taught himself what he needed at night, while he was standing watch on the
ship.
14
By the time he was in his early 20s, Percy Spencer had taken another big
leap. He was only the fifth employee of the new company Raytheon. He continued
inventing and learning. The company grew, and his knowledge grew with it. Soon
he was an equal with the smartest and best educated people in the United
States.
15
Before Spencer Percy’s lucky microwave discovery, Raytheon was most
famous for making a device that helped shrink down the radio to a modest size
and cost. That helped put radios in many American households, making it one of
the first devices for broad, shared communication. Raytheon also manufactured
magnetic devices used for tracking moving vehicles and other moving objects on
Earth or in space. One of Raytheon’s experiments was the Magnetron. The
Magnetron generated microwaves, which are exactly what they sound like: small
waves that are shorter in length than a regular radio wave. Scientists at
Raytheon discovered that the Magnetron gave off a lot of heat. No one made a
connection between this high heat and any possibilities for progress until
Percy Spencer.
16
Standing near the Magnetron one day while it was on, Spencer noticed
that the bar of chocolate in his pocket melted. He had a moment of realization.
He asked for popcorn kernals, and put them near the heat. Minutes later, the
man we can thank for microwave popcorn had a discovery on his hands.
17
It took more than 20 years, a lot of patience and many mistakes before
Raytheon perfected a microwave oven that people could use and afford. In 1967,
the Amana Radarange made its debut. Movies on demand at home were still decades
away, but at least now Americans were ready with the popcorn. All thanks to
Percy Spencer and his mistaken snack.
In Praise of Careful Science
18
Don’t be fooled: Accidents usually do not lead to great discoveries.
Although it is fun to think about how a bump on the head from an apple changed
our understanding of gravity, the reality is less fun. Most of the time,
scientists work for decades and make very few mistakes. When they do, most
mistakes cause problems, not progress.
19
Scientist John Denker says that
many “big discoveries” were actually invented, step by step. Scientists made
small discoveries over time. A lot of these small discoveries were predicted,
and then proven, with no mistakes. Denker describes how magnetrons and radar
were discovered. They were researched for years. The work was kept secret. The
scientists worked to avoid mistakes. When they were announced, the public did
not imagine the years that went into that work. Then, Percy Spencer
accidentally discovered the magnetron’s property for heating food. That one
moment overshadowed many years of careful science.
20
It also took more than 20 years after the “melted chocolate moment” to
bring a commercial microwave to the public. The equally important process after
discovery is also ignored. During that long process after discovery, scientists
need to test their ideas with care and make as few mistakes as possible. When
Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium, they spent years after the 1898
discovery studying it. They were still studying it when they shared the Nobel
Prize for Science with Henri Becquerel in 1903.
21
As John Denker says, “I am reminded of the rock star who said it took
him 15 years to become an overnight sensation.”
22
It is too easy to say, “Without mistakes, no discoveries can be made.”
Most mistakes do not lead directly to discoveries. Thomas Edison said that
inventing was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. The typical
roles of a mistake in science is not to lead to a brilliant invention, but to
teach a scientist how to do better next time. As space physicist Carl Sagan once
said, “Science is a self-correcting process.”
A Series of Quotation about Error and Discovery
23
“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often
discover what will do by finding out what will not do; and probably he who
never made a mistake never made a discovery.”—19th century Scottish
author Samuel Smiles
24
“Error is a hardy plant; it flourisheth in every soil.”—19th
century English writer Martin Farquhar Tupper
25
“Love truth, but pardon error.”—18th century author and
philosopher Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
26
“The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex
facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple
because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of
every natural philosopher should be, “Seek simplicity and distrust it.”—20th
century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead
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