7. The Pacemaker
Another invention that has saved countless lives since its initial development is the pacemaker. American engineer Wilson Greatbatch was working on something else, a project of a different sort, when he stumbled upon the implantable pacemaker. He was trying to create a contraption that recorded human heartbeats when he used the wrong resistor, altering the function of the machine. The result was something that perfectly mimicked the natural rhythm of the human heartbeat. The inventor gave the world the pacemaker in the 1960’s and passed at age 92 in 2011.