Backs of Napkins Birthplace for Most Famous Ideas, Contracts

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From medical breakthroughs and multi-million dollar soccer deals to economic innovations and Hollywood pre nuptials, Mypapershop.com, Orange, Calif., USA, has revealed that some of the world’s most amazing ideas and contracts were first jotted down on the back of a napkin. Mypapershop.com says that it has created a fascinating new infographic showing examples of just what some of the world's most important sketches, contracts, or doodles might have looked like.

Some of those infamous napkins include the first contract of football superstar Lionel Messi with his club Barcelona. When the Barcelona's sporting director first spotted the talented 11 year old, so eager to sign the young Messi he hastily drew up the contract on a napkin to secure the Argentinean signed for the Spanish club.

More surprisingly, U.S. Nobel Prize winner, Paul Lauterbur, first outlined plans for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology on a napkin while he was eating a hamburger at a diner. This idea went on to become a significant medical breakthrough helping save thousands of lives and unlocking many secrets of the human body.

From hamburger joints to bars, the original point scoring system for NASCAR racing was first scribbled down on a bar napkin, Mypapershop.com, notes. One of the world's most significant economic theories, it adds, which dictated the flow of billions of dollars across the worlds economies, the Laffer Curve, that plots the relationship between tax rate and government revenue, was first jotted on a napkin in 1974.

Mypapershop.com also points out that Hollywood superstars might assume to have an army of lawyers and files documenting their affairs. However, in 1989 during Steven Spielberg's $100 million divorce settlement to Amy Irving, a judge discounted his pre-nuptial, scribbled on a napkin, which led to one of the most costly divorce settlements in history.

It’s even rumored that one of President Lincoln's most famous speeches, the Gettysburg address, was drafted on the back of a napkin and that the first ideas for rock star, David Bowie's alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, were first sketched out on a napkin.