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47-489: Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), better known as Rube Goldberg ( / ˈ r uː b / ), was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. The cartoons led to the expression " Rube Goldberg machines " to describe similar gadgets and processes. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including

94-655: A Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1948, the National Cartoonists Society 's Gold T-Square Award in 1955, and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists Society , which hosts the annual Reuben Award , honoring the top cartoonist of the year and named after Goldberg, who won the award in 1967. He is the inspiration for international competitions known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests , which challenge participants to create

141-625: A "machine" is often presented on paper and would be impossible to implement in actuality. More recently, such machines have been fully constructed for entertainment (for example, a breakfast scene in Pee-wee's Big Adventure ) and in Rube Goldberg competitions . The expression is named after the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg , whose cartoons often depicted devices that performed simple tasks in indirect convoluted ways. The cartoon above

188-567: A McNaught executive) and the Register and Tribune Syndicate , as well as with entrepreneur Everett M. "Busy" Arnold , to provide material to the burgeoning comic book industry. For this reason, from 1937 until 1939, many of the syndicate's comic strips were reprinted in the comic book anthology Feature Funnies (published by Arnold). In 1939, Cowles Media Company (the Register and Tribune Syndicate's corporate owner) and Arnold bought out

235-563: A Rube Goldberg machine out of sugar. An event called 'Mission Possible' in the Science Olympiad involves students building a Rube Goldberg-like device to perform a certain series of tasks. The Rube Goldberg company holds an annual Rube Goldberg machine contest. McNaught Syndicate The McNaught Syndicate was an American newspaper syndicate founded in 1922. It was established by Virgil Venice McNitt (who gave it his name) and Charles V. McAdam. Its best known contents were

282-502: A complicated machine to perform a simple task. Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883, in San Francisco , California , to Jewish parents Max and Hannah ( née Cohn) Goldberg. He was the third of seven children, three of whom died as children; older brother Garrett, younger brother Walter, and younger sister Lillian also survived. Goldberg began tracing illustrations when he was four years old, and he took his only drawing lessons with

329-667: A degree in Engineering 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 . The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin , where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907, finding employment as

376-502: A habeas case that "Rube Goldberg would envy the scheme the Court has created." Rube Goldberg wrote the first feature film for the pre- Curly Howard version of The Three Stooges called Soup to Nuts , which was released in 1930 and starred Ted Healy . The film featured his machines and included cameos of Rube himself. In the 1962 John Wayne movie Hatari! , an invention to catch monkeys by character Pockets, played by Red Buttons ,

423-399: A high school division added in 1996. Devices must complete a simple task in a minimum of twenty steps and a maximum of seventy-five in the style of Goldberg. The contest is hosted nationwide by Rube Goldberg Inc., a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), founded by Rube's son George W. George , and currently managed by Rube's granddaughter, Jennifer George. In 1998, Justice Scalia remarked in a dissent in

470-442: A large gymnasium. Each apparatus is linked by a string to its predecessor and successor machine. The initial string is ceremonially pulled, and the ensuing events are videotaped in closeup, and simultaneously projected on large screens for viewing by the live audience. After the entire cascade of events has finished, prizes are then awarded in various categories and age levels. Videos from several previous years' contests are viewable on

517-561: A letter by Albert Einstein . Other successes included columns by Dale Carnegie and Dear Abby by Abigail Van Buren . At the time of McNitt's death in 1964, the syndicate was still led by McAdam, providing contents to 1,000 newspapers. By 1987, McNaught had only 24 features left, making it the tenth largest comic strip syndicate in the United States at that time. The syndicate eventually folded in September 1989. One of

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564-561: A local sign painter. In 1911, he built the R. L. Goldberg Building at 182–198 Gough Street, San Francisco, for his widowed father to live in, as well as to collect rental income. Goldberg married Irma Seeman on October 17, 1916. They lived at 98 Central Park West in New York City and had two sons: Thomas and George . During World War II , as each of his sons headed off to college, Goldberg insisted that they change their surname because of antisemitic sentiment toward him stemming from

611-695: A national engineering fraternity. In 2009, the Epsilon chapter of Theta Tau established a similar annual contest at the University of California, Berkeley . Since around 1997, the kinetic artist Arthur Ganson has been the emcee of the annual "Friday After Thanksgiving" (FAT) competition sponsored by the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Teams of contestants construct elaborate Rube Goldberg style chain-reaction machines on tables arranged around

658-407: A real-life Goldberg device. The iCarly (2007) episode iDon’t Want to Fight, Spencer built a Rube Goldberg Machine to feed his fish. The Suite Life on Deck episode A London Carol, Cody built a Rube Goldberg Machine to help Zack wake up at six a.m. The 2010 music video "This Too Shall Pass – RGM Version" by the rock band OK Go features a machine that, after four minutes of kinetic activity, shoots

705-414: A series of seven short animated films which focus on humorous aspects of everyday situations in the form of an animated newsreel . The seven films were released on these dates in 1916: May 8, The Boob Weekly ; May 22, Leap Year ; June 5, The Fatal Pie ; Jun 19, From Kitchen Mechanic to Movie Star ; July 3, Nutty News ; July 17, Home Sweet Home ; July 31, Losing Weight . Goldberg was syndicated by

752-787: A simple task, such as the front gate mechanism in The Goonies and the breakfast machine shown in Pee-wee's Big Adventure . In Ernest Goes to Jail , Ernest P. Worrell uses his invention simply to turn his TV on. Other films such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , the end credits of Waiting... , Diving into the Money Pit , and Back to the Future have featured Rube Goldberg–style devices as well. Wallace from Wallace and Gromit creates and uses many such machines for numerous, oft trivial tasks and productivity enhancements (e.g. getting dressed). The inspiration for these contraptions, however,

799-568: A sports cartoonist with the New York Evening Mail . Goldberg's first public hit was a comic strip called Foolish Questions , beginning in 1908. The invention cartoons began in 1912. The New York Evening Mail was syndicated to the first newspaper syndicate , the McClure Newspaper Syndicate , giving Goldberg's cartoons a wider distribution, and by 1915 he was earning $ 25,000 per year and being billed by

846-551: Is Goldberg's Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin , which was later reprinted in a few book collections, including the postcard book Rube Goldberg's Inventions! and the hardcover Rube Goldberg: Inventions , both compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. The term "Rube Goldberg" was being used in print to describe elaborate contraptions by 1928, and appeared in

893-764: Is described as a "Rube Goldberg." In the late 1960s and early '70s, educational shows like Sesame Street , Vision On and The Electric Company routinely showed bits that involved Rube Goldberg devices, including the Rube Goldberg Alphabet Contraption , and the What Happens Next Machine . Various other films and cartoons have included highly complicated machines that perform simple tasks. Among these are Flåklypa Grand Prix , Looney Tunes , Tom and Jerry , Wallace and Gromit , Pee-wee's Big Adventure , The Way Things Go , Edward Scissorhands , Back to

940-579: Is the British cartoonist W. Heath Robinson . The Incredible Machine is a series of video games in which players create a series of Rube Goldberg devices. The board game Mouse Trap has been referred to as an early practical example of such a contraption. In early 1987, Purdue University in Indiana started the annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest , organized by the Phi chapter of Theta Tau ,

987-593: The Random House Dictionary of the English Language in 1966 meaning "having a fantastically complicated improvised appearance", or "deviously complex and impractical". Because Rube Goldberg machines are contraptions derived from tinkering with the tools close at hand, parallels have been drawn with evolutionary processes. Many of Goldberg's ideas were utilized in films and TV shows for the comedic effect of creating such rigamarole for such

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1034-572: The Bell Syndicate , including Ham Fisher 's Joe Palooka . Eastern Color neither sold this periodical nor made it available on newsstands , but rather sent it out free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Procter & Gamble soap and toiletries products. The company printed 10,000 copies, and it was a great success. In 1937, the McNaught Syndicate partnered with Frank J. Markey (formerly

1081-669: The McNaught Syndicate from 1922 until 1934. A prolific artist, it has been estimated that Goldberg created 50,000 cartoons during his lifetime. Some of these cartoons include Mike and Ike (They Look Alike) , Boob McNutt , Foolish Questions , What Are You Kicking About , Telephonies , Lala Palooza , The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club , and the uncharacteristically serious soap-opera strip, Doc Wright , which ran for 10 months beginning January 29, 1933. The cartoon series that brought him lasting fame

1128-563: The Register and Tribune Syndicate : Brad and Dad (1939–1941) and Side Show (1938–1941), a continuation of the invention drawings. Starting in 1938, Goldberg worked as the editorial cartoonist for the New York Sun . He won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for a cartoon entitled " Peace Today ". He moved to the New York Journal-American in 1949 and worked there until his retirement in 1963. In

1175-460: The University of California , where Rube attended from 1901 to 1903. Frederick Slate gave his engineering students the task of building a scale that could weigh the Earth. The scale was called the “Barodik". To Goldberg, this exemplified a comical combination of seriousness and ridiculousness that would come to serve as an inspiration in his work. From 1938 to 1941, Goldberg drew two weekly strips for

1222-442: The 1960s, Goldberg began a sculpture career, primarily creating busts . The popularity of Goldberg's cartoons was such that the term "Goldbergian" was in use in print by 1915, and "Rube Goldberg" by 1928. "Rube Goldberg" appeared in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language in 1966 meaning "having a fantastically complicated improvised appearance", or "deviously complex and impractical." The 1915 usage of "Goldbergian"

1269-461: The American alternative rock/indie band The Bravery released a video for their debut single, "An Honest Mistake," which features the band performing the song in the middle of a Rube Goldberg machine. In 1999, an episode of The X-Files was titled " The Goldberg Variation ". The episode intertwined characters FBI agents Mulder and Scully, a simple apartment super, Henry Weems (Willie Garson) and an ailing young boy, Ritchie Lupone ( Shia LaBeouf ) in

1316-759: The Central Press Association of New York City. (Although both services had the same name, they were separate operations.) In 1922, McNitt and Charles V. McAdam (1892–1985) absorbed the operations of the New York City Central Press Association and co-founded the McNaught Syndicate, with headquarters in The New York Times building. Will Rogers ' weekly column started in 1922 in 25 newspapers. By 1926, his daily column ran in 92 newspapers, and it reached 400 papers three years later, making him one of

1363-521: The English illustrator with an equal devotion to odd machinery, also portraying sequential or chain reaction elements. The Danish equivalent was the painter, author and cartoonist Robert Storm Petersen , better known under his pen name Storm P. To this day, an overly complicated and/or useless object is known as a Storm P.-machine in Denmark. Goldberg's work was commemorated posthumously in 1995 with

1410-721: The Future , Honey, I Shrunk the Kids , The Goonies , Gremlins , the Saw film series , Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , The Cat from Outer Space , Malcolm , Hotel for Dogs , the Home Alone film series , Family Guy , American Dad! , Casper , and Waiting... In the Final Destination film series the characters often die in Rube Goldberg-esque ways. In the film The Great Mouse Detective ,

1457-782: The MIT Museum website. The Chain Reaction Contraption Contest is an annual event hosted at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in which high school teams each build a Rube Goldberg machine to complete some simple task (which changes from year to year) in 20 steps or more (with some additional constraints on size, timing, safety, etc.). On the TV show Food Network Challenge , competitors in 2011 were once required to create

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1504-586: The McNaught and Markey interests. In 1939, the syndicate hired Vin Sullivan , then editor of Action Comics , to start a new comics publishing company, Columbia Comics , which would carry both new comics and reprints of McNaught syndicated comics like Joe Palooka . The company existed until 1949 and is best remembered for their publication Big Shot Comics . The syndicate continued columns and strips which were already successful when acquired, but it also

1551-402: The band members in the face with paint. "RGM" presumably stands for Rube Goldberg Machine. 2012 The CBS show Elementary features a machine in its opening sequence. The 2012 Discovery Channel show Unchained Reaction pitted two teams against each other to create an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. It was judged and executive-produced by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman , known for hosting

1598-466: The best paid and most read columnists of the United States at the time. From 1925 until 1951, Charles Benedict Driscoll was one of the editors and contributors for the syndicate. Writers syndicated by McNaught in those first years included Paul Gallico , Dale Carnegie , Walter Winchell and Irvin S. Cobb . By the early 1930s, the McNaught Syndicate had a stable which included columnists O. O. McIntyre and Al Smith and at one time even syndicated

1645-471: The big successes for it. By the mid-1930s, McNaught's stable of cartoonists included Fisher, John H. Striebel , and Gus Mager . In 1933, just as the concept of "comic books" was getting off the ground, Eastern Color Printing published Funnies on Parade , which reprinted in color several comic strips licensed from the McNaught Syndicate, the Ledger Syndicate , Associated Newspapers , and

1692-687: The columns by Will Rogers and O. O. McIntyre , the Dear Abby letters section and comic strips, including Joe Palooka and Heathcliff . It folded in September 1989. Virgil McNitt (1881–1964) first tried his hand at publishing a magazine, the McNaught Magazine , which failed. He then, in 1910, started the Central Press Association syndication service, with offices in Cleveland, Ohio . In 1920, McNitt founded

1739-429: The first syndicated artists was Rube Goldberg . McNaught's line-up of comic strips included Mickey Finn and Dixie Dugan . Ham Fisher 's Joe Palooka was at first rejected by McNitt, but Fisher was hired as a salesman for the syndicate, offering McNaught's features to newspapers. After having sold his comic to 20 newspapers, McNitt had to change his opinion and added Joe Palooka to the syndicate, becoming one of

1786-492: The game. In 1909 Goldberg invented the "Foolish Questions" game based on his successful cartoon by the same name. The game was published in many versions from 1909 to 1934. Rube Works: The Official Rube Goldberg Invention Game , the first game authorized by The Heirs of Rube Goldberg, was published by Unity Games (the publishing arm of Unity Technologies ) in November 2013. Rube Goldberg machine The design of such

1833-470: The inclusion of Rube Goldberg's Inventions , depicting his 1931 "Self-Operating Napkin" in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. postage stamps . The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest originated in 1949 as a competition at Purdue University between two fraternities. It ran until 1956, and was revived in 1983 as a university-wide competition. In 1989 it became a national competition, with

1880-603: The paper as America's most popular cartoonist. Arthur Brisbane had offered Goldberg $ 2,600 per year in 1911 in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to move to William Randolph Hearst 's newspaper chain, and in 1915 raised the offer to $ 50,000 per year. Rather than lose Goldberg to Hearst, the New York Evening Mail matched the salary offer and formed the Evening Mail Syndicate to syndicate Goldberg's cartoons nationally. In 1916, Goldberg created

1927-421: The political nature of his cartoons. Thomas chose the surname George, and his brother, also named George, followed suit. In adopting the same surname, George wanted to keep a sense of family cohesiveness. Goldberg's father was a San Francisco police and fire commissioner, who encouraged the young Reuben to pursue a career in engineering . Rube graduated from the University of California, Berkeley , in 1904 with

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1974-478: The same hospital and finally meet. Both board games and video games have been inspired by Goldberg's creations, such as the '60s board game Mouse Trap , the 1990s series of The Incredible Machine games, and Crazy Machines . The Humongous Entertainment game Freddi Fish 2: The Case of the Haunted Schoolhouse involves searching for the missing pieces to a Rube Goldberg machine to complete

2021-477: The science entertainment series MythBusters . The 2014 web series Deadbeat on Hulu features an episode titled "The Ghost in the Machine," which features the protagonist Kevin helping the ghost of Rube Goldberg complete a contraption. It will bring his grandchildren together after they make a collection of random items into a machine that ends up systematically injuring two of his grandchildren so they end up in

2068-499: The villain Ratigan attempts to kill the film's heroes, Basil of Baker Street and David Q. Dawson, with a Rube Goldberg style device. The classic video in this genre was done by the artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss in 1987 with their 30-minute video Der Lauf der Dinge or The Way Things Go. Honda produced a video in 2003 called " The Cog " using many of the same principles that Fischli and Weiss had done in 1987. In 2005,

2115-531: Was The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, A.K. , which ran in Collier's Weekly from January 26, 1929, to December 26, 1931. In that series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics in the form of patent applications of the comically intricate "inventions" that would later bear his name. The character of Professor Butts was based on Rube's professor Frederick Slate at the College of Mining and Engineering at

2162-469: Was active in creating and suggesting new content, from the Will Rogers columns to comic strips like Don Dean's Cranberry Boggs . In one case, McNitt supported a crossover between the comic strips Joe Palooka and Dixie Dugan , a feat which was commented upon by Editor & Publisher . Their last success came with the comic strip Heathcliff , which they syndicated from the start in 1973 until

2209-475: Was in reference to Goldberg's early comic strip Foolish Questions , which he drew from 1909 to 1934, while later use of the terms "Goldbergian", "Rube Goldberg" and "Rube Goldberg machine" refer to the crazy inventions for which he is now best known from his strip The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts , drawn from 1914 to 1964. The corresponding term in the UK was, and still is, " Heath Robinson ", after

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