CONVENTIONAL THINKING

Elias Howe (1819–1867) was an ordinary craftsman from Massachusetts, one of America’s well-known states. He died at the young age of just 48. Yet he gave the world something that brought a revolution in clothing production. This was the sewing machine, which he invented in 1845.

The machine Howe first built had a needle with the hole near the base, like ordinary hand needles. For thousands of years, people had been putting the hole at the base of the needle, so when Howe designed his sewing machine, he followed the same practice. But because of this, his machine didn’t work properly. At first, it could only stitch shoes. Sewing cloth was not possible on it.

For a long time, Howe struggled with this problem but couldn’t find a solution. Then he had a dream—and that dream gave him the answer. In it, he saw that men from a wild tribe had captured him and ordered him to make a sewing machine within 24 hours or be killed. He tried, but couldn’t finish the machine in time. When the deadline passed, the tribesmen rushed at him with spears. Looking closely, he noticed that each spear had a hole near its tip. As he was staring at this, he woke up. That was the clue he needed.

He put the hole at the tip of the needle, like the spear, and passed the thread through it. Now the problem was solved. The machine that hadn’t worked with the hole at the top worked perfectly once the hole was moved to the lower side.

Howe’s difficulty was that he couldn’t rise above conventional thinking. He assumed that what people had done for thousands of years must be right. When his subconscious showed him another possibility, he understood at once and solved the problem. When a person throws himself fully into a task, he can discover its hidden secrets in the same way Howe did.