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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

    • How Experts Resist Ideas


    It is surprising that not only the lay people, but even experts are often blind to the potential of new ideas. In fact, often it were the authorities in the field who failed to accept the inevitability of change. Some examples:

      • In 1899, Charles H Duell, Commissioner of the US Office of Patents urged President William McKinley to abolish the patent office. He said, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

      • An article in Scientific American in January, 1909 stated: "That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced."

      • In 1927, a young engineer named DeForest walked into the office of Harry Warner, the co-founder of Warner Brothers. DeForest had worked out a way of synchronising sound and images, which could change a silent movie into a talkie. Harry Warner, after listening to him, remarked: "Are you crazy? Who wants to hear an actor talk?"

      • In 1957, two years before the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, was successfully launched, and just twelve years before man's landing on moon, Sir Harold Spencer Jones, the Director of Greenwich Observatory, declared: "Man will never set foot on the moon or the mars."

      • Till 1970s the computer market was defined in terms of mainframes. Even when the possibility of home computers and personal computing started becoming a technological reality, market leaders like IBM failed to perceive this new potential. Ken Olsen, the entrepreneurial founder and President of Digital Equipment Corporation - a company which is supposed to have virtually created the market for minicomputers -, is on record to have said in 1977: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

      • It took the scientific world quite some time to accept Herman Oberth as the "father of space travel". When Oberth published his somewhat prophetic book Rockets to Planetary Space in 1923, it attracted much criticism and scepticism. An article about the book in the well-known scientific periodical Nature commented that the project of space rocket would probably be realised just before the extinction of the mankind.

      • Sir Ronald Fisher is now regarded as the pioneer of modern statistics and experimental designs. However, when he submitted his first paper which laid the foundation for later works for publication to the Royal Society, it was rejected. Had it not been for a sponsor who met the publication costs, the paper would not have been published at all.


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