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The Creative Muse: Stories of Creativity & Innovation

Madhukar Shukla


  • Preface
  • Introduction

    STORIES:

  • Discoveries about Creativity
  • Laws Of Planetary Motion
  • Electricity From Clouds
  • Band-Aid
  • Pneumatic Tyres
  • Gummed Paper
  • The Trap Of Paradigm
  • Invention Of Sewing Machine
  • Just-In-Time System
  • Transmission of Nerve Impulses
  • Printing Press
  • Dangers Of Locomotives
  • Flashlight
  • Lawn Mower
  • Phonograph
  • Rubber Heels
  • The Periodic Table
  • Discovery Of Electromagnetic Fields
  • The Tao Of Physics
  • Congenital Impact of Rubella
  • Typewriter
  • The Theory Of Evolution
  • The Benzene Ring
  • The Wreck Of Titanic
  • Wagner's Rheingold
  • Underwater Construction
  • Search For The "Hidden Likeness"
  • Fermi & Nuclear Fission
  • Cash Register
  • Discovery Of Current Electricity
  • Cure Of Diabetes
  • Boolean Algebra
  • Principle Of Photosynthesis
  • Ball Point Pen
  • The X-Ray
  • The Fuschian Functions
  • Safety Glass
  • The Creative Triggers
  • Why Aeroplanes Cannot Fly
  • The "Brownies" Of Stevenson
  • The Blunder That Founded 3M
  • Invention Of AC Motor
  • Discovery Of Teflon
  • Toynbee's The Study Of History
  • Inventors' Blindness
  • The Excitement Of Creativity
  • Electric Fan
  • How Typhus Gets Transmitted
  • Proof Of The Big Bang
  • Mathematical Theory Of Chance
  • Coleridge's Kubla Khan
  • Vulcanisation Process
  • Structure Of The Crystals
  • The Compulsion To Create
  • 3M's Post-It Note Pads
  • Ice Cream Cones
  • The Structural Theory Of Atom
  • IBM And Computers
  • Helicopter
  • How Experts Resist Ideas
  • Creative Reveries Of Enid Blyton
  • Predictions In Gulliver's Travels
  • Float Glass Technology
  • Principle Of Immunisation
  • Journey Into Unknown
  • The Genius Of Karl Fredrich Gauss
  • Jean Coceteau's The Knights Of The Round Table
  • Neon Light
  • Transistor Radios
  • Precocious Minds?
  • The Masterpiece Of Sir Walter Scott
  • The "Fraud" That Changed The World
  • The "99% Perspiration"
  • Xeroxing
  • The Poem Of Stephen Spender
  • The Anatomy Of Inspiration
  • Travellers' Cheques
  • Edison's Fraud
  • Awe, Wonder And Alienation
  • The Logic Of Irrational

  • Epilogue: Themes & Patterns

    • Transmission of Nerve Impulses


    Any idea is like a child; it requires a gestation period to mature. Often a vague idea is conceived in mind, but takes a long time to find a tangible expression. What is important is that this maturing of the idea is not always through conscious efforts. One such major discovery was the chemical nature of transmission of nerve impulses by Otto Leowi.

    As far back as 1903, Leowi had discussed with a colleague "the fact that certain drugs mimic the augmentory as well as the inhibitory affects of the stimulation of sympathetic and\or parasympathetic nerves on their effector organs." During this discussion, it also occurred to him that the terminals of those nerves might contain chemicals, that stimulation might liberate them from nerve terminals, and that these chemicals might in turn transmit the nervous impulse to their respective effector organs. At that time, however, he did not see a way to prove the correctness of this hunch, and forgot all about it till the idea came back to him in a dream in 1920. He described this nocturnal inspiration:

        "The night before Easter Sunday of that year, I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of thin paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at six o'clock in the morning that during that during the night I had written down something important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at three o'clock the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered seventeen years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a simple experiment on a frog heart according to the nocturnal design.... If I had carefully considered it (the design) in daytime, I would undoubtedly have rejected the kind of experiment I performed.... It was god fortune that at the time of the hunch I did not think but acted."


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