You call it luck. The journalist called it a gift from the battery gods. The truth lies somewhere between those extremes ... can you say ‘serendipity’?
It is not a scientific discovery. It is an engineering discovery.
Most advances are engineering discoveries.
Yes, serendipity of a sort. A lot of “cut and try”.
Edison said 99% of invention is perspiration, or something close to that.
Lexan. GE. 1953.
The rest is history.