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I wish I would have saved this book. It was a series of essays about products through to be failures turned into success. Tells story of new VP at Sony walking around and finding one R&D team with great music playing in the lab coming from tiny tape deck. They didn't market it because it had no record function. Another lab he finds some incredibly light weight earbud/headphone things. Engineers said the audiophiles didn't like them. He put the two together and the Sony Walkman was born.

Story of Goodyear meeting with investors in shed heated by wood stove. Tires were so weak they could blow out without warning and "can I kick the tires" became part of American culture. In a fit of anger the new hunk of rubber slapped and stuck to the wood stove. When they peeled it off they found it was still flexible and much more impervious to damage. He got his money and people got vulcanized rubber tires.

3M engineers wanted to make a glue so strong it would make Crazy Glue seem like Elmer's School Glue by exponentially extending the drying time. Problem was it never really got fully dry and bonded to anything. It was a colossal failure until someone slapped it on the back of little yellow pieces of paper to create Post-It Notes.

I put this in reference because that is where this site put "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things"
/book/show/2...

and it is kind of in that vein.

I was thirty-something when I read this book. Had to be in the 1990s due to the Post-It thing I remember. Yes, the story doesn't quite match this one:


Well it does. That one just left out what they were trying to create and said "discovered."

Somehow I think the title had "everyday things" in the name somewhere. So far everything I've searched came up bust. Nothing in the TOC provided a swift boot to the head.

Hopefully someone here read the book and can provide the title. I regret not keeping that book.

Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing?

The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T.?

The Design of Everyday Things?

Really Useful: The Origins of Everyday Things?



If it's not any of these, do a search on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ for "everyday things." Also search in the title field on Worldcat. There are tons of books with "everyday things" in the title and you can scan through a list of results and look for 1990s.

I looked at the TOC on The Malignant Tumor That Will One Day End the Human Race (Amazon) for

"Really Useful: The Origins of Everyday Things"

According to the index, you hit the nail on the head. Found both Walkman and Vulcanized rubber.

Thanks!

You're welcome.