Ideas

At 4:00 this morning, I was awake.  I was not happy to be awake, and tried going back to sleep, but my brain wanted to play.  ;) 

For some reason, I started thinking about ideas.  Where do they come from?  Where do people GET ideas, especially for new inventions or discoveries?  I'm not talking about things like the airplane, which is a great invention, but birds kind of gave us that idea, don't you think?  :)  And fire...figuring out how to make fire probably came from someone witnessing a spark when two flint stones (not The Flintsones) hit each other or lightening struck nearby and ignited some dry brush or grass.  I'm talking about inventing something that was really new and different.  Who was the first person to think of an engine?  I mean, how do you come up with the idea of creating something like that?  How about before the television and radio were invented...who thought of how we can transmit sound and pictures to a "box"?  How about discovering molecules and atoms?  It boggles my mind.  

The other thing that was going through my mind at 4am was the idea of infinity.  I used to lie awake as a child and think about the fact that space is never-ending.  I would imagine the night sky in my mind and then go beyond that, thinking past the planets and galaxies in space and what it might feel like to travel in a straight line forever.  Yeah, my brain is warped.  ;)