An egg of Columbus or Columbus's egg ( ) refers to a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact. The expression refers to an apocryphal story, dating from at least the 16th century, in which it is said that Christopher Columbus, having been told that finding a new trade route was inevitable and no great accomplishment, challenges his critics to make an egg stand on its tip. After his challengers give up, Columbus does it himself by tapping the egg on the table to flatten its tip.
The story is often alluded to when discussing creativity. The term has also been used as the trade name of a tangram puzzle and several mechanical puzzles.
Source of the story
The Columbus egg story may have originated with Italian historian and traveler Girolamo Benzoni. In his book History of the New World, published in 1565, he wrote:
The factual accuracy of this story is called into question by its similarity to another tale published fifteen years earlier (while Benzoni was still travelling in the Americas) by painter and architect Giorgio Vasari. According to Vasari, the young Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi had designed an unusually large and heavy dome for Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy. City officials had asked to see his model, but he refused, proposing instead:
When the church was finally built it had the shape of half an egg slightly flattened at the top.
See also
Egg balancing, a Chinese tradition
Gömböc, an egg-like (convex, homogeneous, solid) 3-D body that has only one stable equilibrium Gordian Knot, a legendary impossible knot Hindsight bias, the inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place Superegg, an egg-like shape designed by Piet Hein that stands on its ends Tesla's Egg of Columbus, Westinghouse Electric display at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition Väinämöinen in Kalevala was asked to tie an egg into a knot, in which he succeeded
Notes
References
Baldwin, James. Columbus and the egg, 1903.
