9 Famous Inventions Inspired By Dreams - Infographic

Frankenstein, the humble sewing machine, Benzene, the Periodic Table of the Elements, the Theory of Relativity, the Theory of Chemical Transition of the Nervous Impulse, DNA, The Beatles' Yesterday and Twilight.

What do these odd bedfellows all have in common? The simple fact is they were all dreamt-up in their inventors' SLEEP!

Did you know?...

The story behind Paul McCartney's Yesterday is that the melody of the most-covered song of all time came to him in a dream, and he woke up with the almost fully-fledged tune buzzing around his head.

It seemed so full and so familiar to him that he was convinced it was must have been a song by someone else that had got into his head, so he hummed and strummed it to the rest of the boys in the studio and sure enough, no one recognised it.

The lyrics were slightly different however. The famous opening line of "Yesterday... all my troubles seemed so far away" didn't yet exist and had to be derived from "Scrambled eggs... nah-nah, nah-nah, ner-ner-ner." Clearly Macca was thinking about his breakfast while in the deepest of sleeps.

Another famous hit that came to him in a dream-like state – this time in that hinterland of half-awake/half-asleep we all experience just before dropping off – was Yellow Submarine.

Did you know?...

Mary Shelley was aged 19 and on holiday with her lover (sounds so much more exciting than "boyfriend" doesn't it) and was staying at poet Lord Byron's Geneva residence (as you do) and dreamt one night of a fearsome phantasm that was awoken with a jolt of electricity. That became the story of Frankenstein's monster, which she began writing the following morning.

More facts about Dreams

• Dreams are described as a "successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep" (Wikipedia).
• Most dreams occur in the R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep, when your brain is at its most active.
• The length of your dreams will vary between a few seconds and 20-30 minutes.
• Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote extensively about dreams, dream theories and interpretations, and was firm in his belief in dreams being manifestations of our deepest anxieties and desires. (Cripes... I hope they're not!)
• Another hypothesis about Dreams is that they allow the repressed parts of the mind to be satisfied through fantasy while keeping the conscious mind from thoughts that would suddenly cause one to awaken from shock.
• You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Who said that? Answers on a postcard! (Phew, it was getting a bit heavy there for a while)
• For a more in-depth look at the meaning of dreams, we have an article on that!

A dream-weaving invention from Dormeo

Another significant invention in the development of sleep (which it would be remiss of us not to mention) is our own Dormeo Octaspring memory foam spring mattress technology. Designed to offer deeper, more comfortable sleep, we can't claim that it came in a flash of inspiration in a dream.

This was the result of years of research, development, and numerous returns to the drawing board. But what inventor Willy Poppe eventually created enabled us to deliver the most breathable memory foam mattress technology in the world.