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Rube Goldberg

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Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was a Jewish American cartoonist who earned lasting fame for his "Rube Goldberg machines"; exceedingly complex devices that perform simple tasks in very indirect and convoluted ways. He was cofounder and president of the American National Cartoonists Society and was posthumously awarded their Gold Key Award in 1980.

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[edit] Biography

Goldberg graduated from Lowell High School in 1900 and earned a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904. Out of college, Goldberg was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer. However, his fondness for drawing cartoons prevailed, and after just a few months he left the city for a job with the San Francisco Chronicle as 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.

He drew cartoons for a number of newspapers, including the New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. His work entered Print in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. An artist, Goldberg made a lot of cartoon series, titles included Mike and Ike and Boob McNutt.

While these series were quite popular, the one leading to his lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In this series, Goldberg would draw labeled designs of comical inventions, which came to be known as Rube Goldberg devices. In 1995, one of these inventions, Professor Butts' Self-Operating Napkin, was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative U.S. postage stamps. He was awarded the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948.

Later in his career, Goldberg was given a job by the New York Journal American, where he remained until his retirement in 1964. He also became a sculptor and an artist.

According to Newsday, Rube Goldberg was an Asharoken, New York resident, and in 1953 designed what became the village seal with a portrait of Chief Asharoken.

Despite his success in his main career and his efforts to create a supportive community, Goldberg dismissed the idea of comics as a form of art with open contempt.

During his retirement, he occupied himself by making bronze sculptures. A number of one-man shows of his work were organized, the last one during his lifetime being in 1970 at the National Museum of American History. He died shortly thereafter at the age of 87. He is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

[edit] Rube Goldberg machines

Main article: Rube Goldberg machine

[edit] Machine contest

In early 1987, Purdue University in Indiana started the annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, organized by the Phi Chapter of Theta Tau, the National Professional Engineering Fraternity. The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest is sponsored by the Theta Tau Educational Foundation. The contest features US college and university teams building machines inspired by Rube Goldberg's cartoon. The contest is judged by the ability for the machine to complete the tasks specified by the challenge using as many steps as possible without a single failure, while making the machines themselves fitting into certain themes.

[edit] References in culture

The Ideal Toy Company released a board game called Mouse Trap in 1963 that was based on Rube Goldberg's ideas (this game is currently made by Hasbro).

LambdaMOO contains a working The Rube Goldberg Contraption, which can generally be found on the Pool Deck.

In the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, the tinker gnomes of the Dragonlance setting are well-known for their propensity to create Goldbergesque machines and tools.

The illustrations in books in the Professor Branestawm series, such as: The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm (ISBN 0-14-035138-8) often include Rube Goldberg devices.

In Jesus is Magic, Sarah Silverman makes a joke about how she gave a guy she'd dated a compliment, but that it went through "the Rube Goldberg crazy straw of his low self-esteem" and ended up offending him.

In Darwin's Black Box, Michael J. Behe likens the blood coagulation cascade to a Rube Goldberg Machine.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

es:Rube Goldberg fr:Rube Goldberg ja:ルーブ・ゴールドバーグ・マシン ko:루브 골드버그 pt:Rube Goldberg sv:Rube Goldberg

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