Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg
Born	Reuben Lucius Goldberg July 4, 1883(1883-07-04) San Francisco, California
Died	December 7, 1970 (aged 87)
Resting place	Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York
Occupation	Cartoonist, inventor
Known for	Rube Goldberg machines

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor. Goldberg is best known for a series of popular cartoons he created depicting complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways – now known as Rube Goldberg machines. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.^[1]

Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society^[2], and is the name sake of the Reuben Award which the organization awards to "Cartoonist of the Year". He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg contests, which challenge participants to make a complex machine to perform a simple task.

Family

Goldberg was married to Irma Seeman in 1916 and remained so for the duration of his life. They had two sons together named Thomas and George. Goldberg did not share a surname with his children for the reason that during World War II he received a large amount of hate mail because of the political nature of his cartoons. As a result he ordered his sons to change their names away from Goldberg for safety reasons. Both of his sons chose the last name of George, wanting to keep a sense of family cohesiveness.^[3] Reuben died in 1970 at the age of 87, while his widow, Irma, died 20 years later at the age of 95.^[4]

Career

Rube Goldberg graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 with a College of Mining degree^[1] and was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department. After six months he resigned his position with the city to join the San Francisco Chronicle where he became a sports cartoonist.^[1] The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907.

Goldberg drew cartoons for five newspapers, including the New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. His work entered syndication in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. He was syndicated by the McNaught Syndicate from 1922 until 1934.

A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously, including Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, Lala Palooza and The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club. The cartoons that brought him lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In that series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics of the comical "inventions" which would later bear his name.

Cultural legacy

This postcard book, Rube Goldberg's Inventions!, was compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. The cover illustration shows Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin. The "Self-Operating Napkin" is activated when the soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C) which throws cracker (D) past parrot (E). Parrot jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and lights automatic cigar lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K) which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M) and allow pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.

In 1931 the Merriam–Webster dictionary adopted the word "Rube Goldberg" as an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complex means.^[5]

Goldberg's work was commemorated posthumously in 1995 with the inclusion of Rube Goldberg's Inventions, depicting Professor Butts' "Self-Operating Napkin" in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. postage stamps.^[6].

Film and TV

Goldberg wrote a feature film featuring his machines and sculptures called Soup to Nuts which was released in 1930 and starred Ted Healy and The Three Stooges.

On the 2005 Holiday Special episode of the Discovery Channel series, MythBusters, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman build a Rube Goldberg machine using a bowling ball, a battery operated robot, a pair of wind-up toy monkeys, a Mentos/Diet-Coke eruption and their crash test dummy mascot, Buster.

Various other films and cartoons have included highly complex machines that perform simple tasks. Among these are Flåklypa Grand Prix, Looney Tunes, Wallace and Gromit, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, The Way Things Go, Edward Scissorhands, Back to the Future, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Goonies, Gremlins, Saw, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Cat From Outer Space, Malcolm, and Waiting...

Also in the Final Destination (film series) the characters often die in Rube Goldbergesque ways.

Games

The popular 1963 board game Mouse Trap, as well as its sequels Crazy Clock (1964), and Fish Bait (1965) are based on Rube Goldberg machines. Some examples of Goldberg-inspired videogames are Incredibots, LittleBigPlanet, the 1990s-era series of The Incredible Machine games, and Crazy Machines.

See also

• Chain reaction
• Deathtrap
• Domino effect
• Heath Robinson, British cartoonist with similar cartoon inventions
• Jean Tinguely, Swiss artist who created Rube Goldberg-like sculptures
• Mickey One
• PythagoraSwitch
• Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
• Steampunk
• Storm P., Danish contemporary artist who drew "inventions" similar to Rube Goldberg's
• Roland Emett

References

External links

• Toonopedia entry
• Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Oral History Interview, 1970
• Annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
• Detailed specifications of an award-winning Rube Goldberg machine from the New York City science fair
• NCS Awards
• Rube Goldberg in 'Creative Contraptions'
• IMDB biography
• Rube Goldberg Honda Commercial, "Cog", at Snopes.com
• Rube Goldberg links