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.

1 Biography
2 Mouse Trap
3 Contest
4 See also
5 External links

[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 such as when he angrily dismissed comic book master Will Eisner's appreciation of the concept in conversation.

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] Mouse Trap

The Ideal Toy Company released a board game called Mouse Trap in 1963 that was based on Rube Goldberg's ideas[1] (this game is currently made by Hasbro). The game designer Marvin Glass (and his company, Marvin Glass and Associates) refused to pay licensing fees or royalties to Goldberg, despite the clear similarities between the game and a Goldberg drawing. Glass went on develop two less well-known games based on Goldberg designs, Crazy Clock (released 1964) and Fish Bait (1965), neither of which credited Goldberg's influence. Elderly and near retirement, Goldberg declined to take legal action against Glass and chose to sell licensing rights for his drawings to another toy company, Model Products instead.

[edit] 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] See also

W. Heath Robinson (a UK cartoonist with an equal devotion to odd machinery, whose name is used in the UK just as "Rube Goldberg machine" is used in the US.)
Chain reaction
Domino effect
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest