Science Museum Hidden Heroes reveals genius of everyday items

During the late 1950s, a Dutch engineer called Marc Chavannes was on a plane. As he looked out over the clouds he noticed how they seemed to be cushioning the plane as it descended for landing. The experience led to the invention of bubble wrap.

In among the smartphones and the routers, the gigabytes and the megapixels, it is very often the simplest of inventions that have the greatest staying power and impact. In 10 years’ time, when the gadgets of today lie redundant, will we still be popping bubble wrap?

Boring but brilliant
Entering the Science Museum in London, we are confronted by an exhibition that invites us to journey through distant galaxies, but we’re here today to look at paperclips. The Hidden Heroes exhibition, which runs until 5 June 2012, aims to reveal the genius of items we use everyday; from rubber bands to tin cans and wall plugs to biros.

Our guide is Dr Susan Mossman, a materials science specialist at the Science Museum. She explains that the exhibition is about “celebrating the truly uncelebrated” and is a chance to shine a light on some outstanding inventions and inventors.

“It is quite rare to get that eureka moment. We’re hoping that people see things a bit differently. We want people to learn about the manufacturing of these inventions and the people behind them. For me, that’s what the exhibition is about.”

The humble tin can
The items on display all have interesting stories behind them, many of them personal stories of inventors and entrepreneurs. Dr Mossman explains that, while some inventions come about purely by chance, a lot are the result of a specific need. One such need, to keep food preserved for a long period of time, inspired the invention of the seemingly humble tin can.

“Napoleon wanted to preserve food to feed his troops. He had masses of men, but how could he feed them?”

The French Emperor set up a competition to find a suitable means to do this, which was won in 1809 by a Frenchman called Nicolas Appert. His idea was to fill airtight bottles with food and sterilise them in boiling water.

In 1810 the British merchant Peter Durand took the idea further and used thin sheets of tin-coated iron to make tin-cans. He received a patent from King George III in 1810. But Durand’s invention wasn’t perfect.

“The problem was they contained lead, which is toxic. Those early tin cans were taken on the Franklin expedition to the Arctic and we believe that they would have suffered from lead poisoning. The food inside was still edible, but it had a lot of lead in it. Since then, canning has moved on and we now have aluminium cans, steel cans, plastic cans and the like.

“When we are in times of crisis we always have cans in the back of our cupboard for emergencies. We don’t think about it, but it is a very safe way of storing food. And it goes all the way back to Napoleon feeding his troops.”