중학교 영어 2 (천재교과서 소영순) 연계 글

Many inventions are carefully planned, but some begin with a surprise. The Slinky, Play-Doh, and Super Glue are three examples.

In 1943, an engineer named Richard James was working on springs that could keep equipment steady on ships. One day, a spring fell off a shelf. Instead of simply dropping, it seemed to walk. James thought that it could make a good toy, and his wife, Betty, found the name "Slinky" in a dictionary. In 1945, the toy was shown at a department store in Philadelphia, and the first 400 were sold very quickly.

Play-Doh was first sold by a soap company in Cincinnati, Ohio, as a cleaner for wallpaper. Back then, many homes were heated with coal, which left black dust on the walls. When families switched to gas or oil, fewer people needed the cleaner. Then Kay Zufall, a nursery school teacher, tried it with her students. Although it was made for cleaning walls, the children loved shaping it like clay. In the mid-1950s, it was given a new name, Play-Doh, and was sold as a toy.

Super Glue began during World War II, when a chemist named Harry Coover was trying to make a clear plastic for military equipment. However, the chemicals he tested stuck to almost everything, so his team gave up on them. In 1951, his team came across the same chemicals again during another project. This time, Coover saw that their stickiness could be useful. The glue was first sold in 1958 and later became known as Super Glue. Today, a special kind of this glue is even used in hospitals to close cuts.

Although these three products began in unplanned ways, luck alone did not make them successful. In each case, a curious person noticed something unexpected and asked how it could be used.