When Ray Harroun came out of retirement in 1911 to race in the first Indianapolis 500, he made one request: He wanted to ditch the ride-along mechanic that the rules required in order to save weight and give his yellow Marmon Wasp a racing edge.

The Indy organizers balked: The mechanic provided a big measure of safety, they said, acting as a spotter who could watch for cars behind or on either side of the racer.

Harroun bolted a mirror to a bracket on his dashboard, was permitted to race without a mechanic, and won the inaugural Indy race - leading 88 of the 200 laps, the most of anyone.

And the rear-view mirror that Harroun used to gain an advantage in a car race? It's now standard safety equipment on motor vehicles of all types - meaning it occupies the ranks of devices or substances that were designed to solve one problem, but were later found to solve others just as well.

Today I'm going to share a similar story, and show you how a fluid developed to keep aircraft parts clean or suppress fires is being used to solve one of the biggest computer problems we face today.

And I'm even going to show you how to make money from it.

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