Reuben Garrett Lucius "Rube" Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author,
engineer, and inventor.
He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets that perform
simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways, similar to Heath Robinson devices in the UK,
as well as the Storm P devices in Denmark.
Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political
cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.
Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society,
and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist
of the Year.
He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine
Contests, which challenge participants to make a complicated machine to perform a simple
task.
Personal life Reuben Lucius Goldberg was born July 4, 1883,
in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Max and Hannah Goldberg.
He was the third of seven children, three of whom died as children.
Rube began tracing illustrations when he was four years old, and first took professional
drawing lessons when he was eleven.
Rube married Irma Seeman on October 17, 1916.
They lived at 98 Central Park West in New York City and had two sons named Thomas and
George.
Goldberg did not share a surname with his children because of the amount of hatred towards
him during World War II stemming from the political nature of his cartoons.
He ordered his sons to change their names from Goldberg for safety reasons.
Both of his sons chose the last name of George, wanting to keep a sense of family cohesiveness.
Thomas and George's children now run a company called RGI to maintain the Goldberg name.
John George is assisted by his cousin Jennifer George and John's son Joshua George to keep
the family name alive.
Goldberg died in 1970 at the age of 87, while his widow, Irma, died on April 26, 1990 at
the age of 95.
Career
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 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.
Goldberg drew cartoons for five newspapers, including the New York Journal American|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, 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" that would later
bear his name.
Cultural legacy In 1931 the Merriam-Webster dictionary adopted
the word "Rube Goldberg" as an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through
complicated means.
Predating Goldberg, the corresponding term in the UK was, and still is, "Heath Robinson",
after the English illustrator with an equal devotion to odd machinery, also portraying
sequential or chain reaction elements.
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.
Film and television
Rube 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.
In the 1962 John Wayne movie Hatari!, an invention to catch monkeys by character Pockets, played
by Red Buttons, 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 the Future, Honey,
I Shrunk the Kids, The Goonies, Gremlins, the Saw film series, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,
The Cat from Outer Space, Malcolm, Family Guy, American Dad!, and Waiting...
Also in the Final Destination film series the characters often die in Rube Goldberg-esque
ways.
In the film The Great Mouse Detective, 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, 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 and an ailing young boy, Ritchie Lupone in a real-life Goldberg device.
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 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.
2014 The 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
that will bring his grandchildren together after making a collection of random items
into a machine that ends up systematically injuring two of his grandchildren so they
end up in the same hospital and finally meet.
Games Both board games and video games have been
inspired by Goldberg's creations, such as the 60's era board game Mouse Trap, the 1990s-era
series of The Incredible Machine games, and Crazy Machines.
Rube Works: The Official Rube Goldberg Invention Game, the first game authorized by The Heirs
of Rube Goldberg, was published by Unity Games in November, 2013.
See also W. Heath Robinson, a British cartoonist who
also became famous for drawing absurd machines Chindōgu
Deathtrap Domino effect
Frederick Rowland Emett Jean Tinguely, Swiss artist who created Rube
Goldberg–like sculptures Mickey One
Mouse Trap PythagoraSwitch
Storm P, a Danish contemporary artist who drew "inventions" similar to Rube Goldberg's
References
External links Official Rube Goldberg website
Toonopedia entry Smithsonian's Archives of American Art: Oral
History Interview with Rube Goldberg, 1970 NCS Awards
IMDB biography Guide to the Rube Goldberg Papers at The Bancroft
Library