Buzz
While most dreams are fleeting and insignificant, like walking through a grocery store in your pajamas or retaking a test you passed long ago, every so often, someone envisions something that sparks innovation and change. Even more rare is when these ideas turn into global movements.
10. The Creation of the First Periodic Table
Dmitri Mendeleev (born 1834) was a celebrated chemist. He took on the monumental task of organizing all the known elements in a way that made logical and scientific sense. Although he believed a solution existed, he struggled to make everything fit together.
One night, he had a dream that brought clarity to his thoughts. According to his diary, Dmitri wrote: “I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.”
He created a table that arranged the elements based on their atomic weight, which he published in 1869. This laid the foundation for the modern periodic table, now organized by the number of protons in the atom of each element.
9. The Terminator Film Series
The inspiration for one of the most iconic sci-fi films came to James Cameron during a fever of 39°C (102°F). At the time, he was in Rome, working on the final edit of Piranha II. He credits both the fever and the feeling of isolation in a foreign country with triggering the vivid nightmare that would eventually become The Terminator.
In this dream, Cameron found himself as a character in a strange, futuristic world. He saw a chrome robot torso using kitchen knives to drag itself away from an explosion. The concept of an unstoppable robotic assassin on a relentless mission to eliminate its target captivated Cameron, prompting him to jot down the details of the dream.
It eventually evolved into a story about two robots battling in a dystopian future, though Cameron later decided to focus on just one robot. This would become the foundation for The Terminator.
8. Google
While attending college in 1996, Larry Page often felt that his admission was a mistake, a clerical error. The constant fear of being expelled at any moment caused him significant anxiety, which led to a peculiar dream.
In his dream, he envisioned downloading and storing the entire Internet on personal computers. Upon waking, he did the math to determine if it was feasible. While bandwidth and storage limitations made it impossible to save entire web pages, it was conceivable to store them as individual links.
This concept inspired Page to begin compiling links to web pages from all over the world and searching through them. This eventually led to the creation of Google, as we know it today.
7. The Theory of Relativity
One of Albert Einstein's groundbreaking discoveries was born from an unusual dream.
In the dream, Einstein found himself watching cows grazing near an electrified fence, yet the cows appeared completely unaffected. When he touched the fence, he realized the reason: it had lost its charge.
A farmer came by and replaced the battery, causing all the cows to leap away at the same moment. Einstein commented to the farmer on the amusing sight of all the cows jumping together. The farmer, however, was confused, stating he had seen each cow jump individually as the charge passed down the fence.
Upon waking, the dream sparked in Einstein the idea that one observer might perceive an event as happening all at once, while others might witness it unfold in a sequence. This insight became the cornerstone of the theory of relativity.
6. H.P. Lovecraft’s Necronomicon
The origin of the Necronomicon, one of the most famous books of dark power, is shrouded in its own mystery. H.P. Lovecraft explained that Necronomicon roughly translates to “an image of the law of the dead” in Greek, though this sparked some debate over the accuracy of the translation. He further claimed that the inspiration for the name came to him through a dream.
This revelation led to various theories about how Lovecraft conceived the idea, with some suggesting that he was influenced by The King in Yellow, a book within a book featuring a sinister volume. Lovecraft, however, insisted that he did not encounter The King in Yellow until years after he had written the Necronomicon.
5. Herge’s Tintin In Tibet
Herge, the mind behind Tintin, was haunted by a recurring nightmare. As he described it:
My dreams were always dominated by vast, empty white spaces, which caused me great distress. I recall one dream where I was in a tower composed of slanted ramps. Dead leaves were falling, covering everything. At one moment, in a perfectly white alcove, a white skeleton appeared, attempting to capture me. Then, in an instant, everything around me turned white.
A psychoanalyst suggested to Herge that his nightmares stemmed from his previous work on Tintin and advised him to stop immediately in order to 'vanquish the demon.' Instead, Herge created Tintin in Tibet, a story largely set in the snowy Alps, which mirrored the 'white spaces' of his dreams. Tintin in Tibet helped Herge overcome his nightmares and went on to become one of his masterpieces.
4. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson was struggling financially and under intense pressure from his publisher to produce a popular adventure novel. One night, he had such a disturbing nightmare that he began shouting in his sleep. His wife, Fanny, woke him, but Stevenson was not pleased. He asked, 'Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.'
It turns out that the nightmare was exactly what Robert needed to turn things around. After the dream, he felt noticeably more hopeful about resolving his problems and eager to share his 'bogey tale' with the world. The result was the creation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which went on to become the very popular book his publisher had been hoping for.
3. The Beatles’ ‘Yesterday’
The melody for 'Yesterday,' one of the Beatles’ most iconic songs, came to Paul McCartney in a dream. At first, he didn’t realize it. He woke up with the tune in his mind, convinced he had heard it somewhere before. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember who performed it.
To solve the mystery, McCartney sat at the piano, played the tune, and wrote down the notes, passing them around to friends to find out who originally sang it. For a while, he refused to believe it was his own subconscious creation. He even said, 'But I couldn’t have written it because I dreamt it.'
When it became clear that it wasn’t a song by someone else, the Beatles finalized it. Originally, it was called 'Scrambled Eggs,' with the second line being, 'Oh, my baby, how I love your legs.' This eventually evolved into the now-famous 'Yesterday.'
2. Frankenstein
At a gathering hosted by Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, then known as Mary Godwin, found herself caught in an unexpected turn of events. A volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies had obscured the sun, plunging what should have been a warm summer into an unnerving chill.
With the outside world cast in gloom, the group turned to storytelling to pass the time, recounting German ghost tales around a campfire. The mood inspired Mary to challenge everyone to come up with their own original ghost story, based on the chilling tales they had just heard.
That night, Mary experienced a vivid dream of a crazed scientist attempting to play God by creating an entirely new race of humans. This haunting vision would later lay the foundation for her iconic novel, Frankenstein, which certainly outshone any fireside competition she had participated in.
1. Christopher Nolan’s Inception
It's hardly surprising that Inception, Christopher Nolan's renowned film about the complex nature of dreams, drew much of its inspiration from his own experiences with dreams. Nolan credits these personal dreams for influencing much of the film's narrative and concepts.
Rather than being inspired by a single dream, Inception was shaped by several instances of lucid dreaming that Christopher Nolan experienced. In lucid dreams, the dreamer has the ability to control and manipulate the dream, often attempting to shift the dream's course to their advantage.
Lucid dreaming, of course, requires the ability to recognize that you're actually dreaming. Nolan's personal experiences with this blurred boundary between dreams and reality provided the perfect foundation for a central theme in the film, exploring how one distinguishes between dreamscapes and the real world.
