Egg of Columbus explained

An egg of Columbus or Columbus's egg (Italian: uovo di Colombo pronounced as /it/) refers to a seemingly impossible task that becomes easy once understood. 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.^[1] 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,^[2] 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.^{[3] [4]} 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.^[5]

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

References

• Baldwin, James. Columbus and the egg, 1903.

Notes and References

1. [Kant, Immanuel]
2. Girolamo Benzoni (1572[1565]), Historia del Mondo Nuovo, Venice, pp. 12–3; English translation: History of the New World by Girolamo Benzoni, Hakluyt Society, London, 1857, p. 17.
3. Giorgio Vasari (1550), Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects: "Filippo Brunelleschi." Florence.
4. The similarity of Vasari's story to the egg of Columbus story was first pointed out in Our Paper, vo. 10, Massachusetts Reformatory, 1894, p. 285.
5. . The great egg-balancing mystery. https://web.archive.org/web/20070221082438/http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_n3_v20/ai_18372128 . dead . 2007-02-21 . . 3 . 20 . May–June 1996 .