Rube Goldberg machine

A Rube Goldberg machine, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg. A related engineering term for such a system is kludge (kluge).

Since then, the expression has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system. For example, news headlines include "Is Rep. Bill Thomas the Rube Goldberg of Legislative Reform?" and "Retirement 'insurance' as a Rube Goldberg machine".

Origin

File:Rubenvent.jpg

Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin

Rube Goldberg's cartoons became well known for depicting complex devices that performed simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. An example on the right is Goldberg's "Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin", which was later reprinted in the postcard book, Rube Goldberg's Inventions!, compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. 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.

Similar expressions worldwide

• Great Britain — a Heath Robinson contraption, named after the fantastical comic machinery illustrated by British cartoonist W. Heath Robinson, shares a similar meaning but predates the Rube Goldberg machine, originating in the UK in 1912.
• France — a similar machine is called usine à gaz, or gasworks, suggesting a very complicated factory with pipes running everywhere. It is now used mainly among programmers to indicate a complex program, or in journalism to refer to a bewildering law or regulation.
• Denmark — called Storm P maskiner ("Storm P machines"), after the Danish inventor and cartoonist Robert Storm Petersen.
• Bengal — the humorist and children's author Sukumar Ray, in his nonsense poem "Abol tabol", had a character (Uncle) with a Rube Goldberg-like machine called "Uncle's contraption". This word is used colloquially in Bengali to mean a complex and useless object.
• Spain — devices akin to Goldberg's machines are known as Inventos del TBO (tebeo), named after those that several cartoonists ( Nit, Tínez, Marino Benejam, Frances Tur and finally Ramón Sabatés) made up and drew for a section in the TBO magazine, allegedly designed by some "Professor Franz" from Copenhagen.
• Norway — cartoonist and storyteller Kjell Aukrust created a cartoon character named Reodor Felgen, who constantly invented complex machinery. Though it was often built out of unlikely parts, it always performed very well. Felgen stars as the inventor of an extremely powerful but overly complex car, Il Tempo Gigante, in the Ivo Caprino animated puppet film Flåklypa Grand Prix (1975).
• Australia — cartoonist Bruce Petty depicts such themes as the economy, international relations or other social issues as complex interlocking machines that manipulate, or are manipulated by, people.
• Turkey — such devices are known as Zihni Sinir Proceleri, allegedly invented by a certain Prof. Zihni Sinir ("Crabby Mind"), a curious scientist character created by İrfan Sayar in 1977 for the cartoon magazine Gırgır. The cartoonist later went on to open a studio selling actual working implementations of his designs.
• Japan — "Pythagorean devices" or "Pythagoras switch". PythagoraSwitch (ピタゴラスイッチ, "Pitagora Suicchi") is the name of a TV show featuring such devices. Another related phenomenon is the Japanese art of chindōgu, which involves inventions that are hypothetically useful but of limited actual utility.
• Austria — Franz Gsellmann has worked for decades on a machine that he named the Weltmaschine ("world machine"), having many similarities to a Rube Goldberg machine.
• Germany — such machines are often called "Was-passiert-dann-Maschine" ("What happens next machine") for the German name of similar devices used by Kermit the Frog in the children's TV show Sesame Street.
• Poland — such machines, or any other device performing unspecified duties, has the placeholder name ustrojstwo, actually a Russian loanword.

Professional artists

• Tim Hawkinson — has made several art pieces that contain complex apparatuses that are generally used to make abstract art or music. Many of them are centered around the randomness of other devices (such as a slot machine) and are dependent on them to create some menial effect.
• Peter Fischli & David Weiss — Swiss artists known for their movie Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go).

Competitions

Rube Goldberg machine designers participating in a competition in New Mexico.

In early 1987, Purdue University in Indiana started the annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, organized by the Phi Chapter of Theta Tau, 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 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 the MIT Museum website.

On Food Network's TV show "Challenge", competitors in 2011 were once required to create a Rube Goldberg machine out of sugar.

One of the events in Science Olympiad involves students building a Rube Goldberg-like device to perform a certain series of tasks.

Examples in media

Where possible, works are arranged in a loose chronological order, so priority of invention and influences can be inferred.

• Designs on Jerry (1953) — an episode of Tom and Jerry which featured a blueprint plan for an elaborate mousetrap, which magically comes to life
• Hook, Line and Stinker (1958) — Looney Tunes cartoon character Wile E. Coyote builds a Rube Goldberg machine in attempt to catch Road Runner
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) — includes a sequence near the beginning of the film where breakfast is "made" by eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts.
• Back to the Future (1985) — shows Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) using a Rube Goldberg machine to start cooking his breakfast and feed his dog when the clock turns to a certain time in the morning. Doc Brown also creates a similar machine in order to create an ice cube, in Back to the Future Part III (1990).
• The Goonies (1985) — has an early scene where 'Chunk' (actor Jeff Cohen) has to perform the 'truffle shuffle' to be allowed entry in the Goonies house. The door is opened through a Rube Goldberg device.
• Brazil (1985) — directed by Terry Gilliam and set in a dystopian totalitarian bureaucratic society, features many Rube Goldberg machines with specific household use.
• Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985) — utilized a Rube Goldberg Machine for the "Breakfast Machine" sequence. This scene is also parodied in the season 4 Family Guy episode 8 Simple Rules for Buying My Teenage Daughter.
• The Way Things Go (1987) — a short film by artists and sculptural collagists Peter Fischli & David Weiss, features an elaborate chain reaction made from old junk in an empty industrial space.
• Apoorva Sagodharargal (1989) — in this Tamil language film, Appu (Kamal Haasan) kills Francis Anbarasu (Delhi Ganesh) using a Rube Goldberg machine.
• Wallace and Gromit (1989?—2010) — a series of films featuring many contraptions that qualify as Rube Goldberg machines.
• Edward Scissorhands (1990) — the Inventor, Edward's "father" (Vincent Price) looks on as puppet-like robots prepare cookies. He then takes a heart shaped cookie and holds it to the hollow chest of his lifeless anthropomorphic creation, inspiring him to create the creature Edward Scissorhands.
• Of Course, You Know This Means Warners / Up a Tree/ Wakko's Gizmo (1994) — in episode 57 of Animaniacs, Wakko builds a Rube Goldberg device which results in a whoopee cushion being set off.
• Final Destination (2000) — several of the deaths in the series are occur through a chain reaction in a Rube Goldberg like style.
• PythagoraSwitch (2002?) — a Japanese children's show which features contraptions several times in an episode and features both machines constructed by the show's staff and videos of machines created by viewers.
• Cog (2003) — a Honda television commercial featuring a complex Rube Goldberg machine made with Honda parts, utilising ideas from The Way Things Go, accused of plagiarism
• Dead Like Me (2003-2004) — in this Showtime series, many deaths occur through Rube Goldberg scenarios.
• An Honest Mistake (2005) — music video by the alternative rock band The Bravery
• Waiting... (2005) — showed a Rube Goldberg machine in the end credits
• El Hormiguero (2006—present) — in this Spanish TV show , at least once a week in the segment El Efecto Mariposa (The Butterfly Effect), a Rube Goldberg machine is developed whose final part tends to show something related to that day's guest.
• The New Cup (2009) — this episode of Flight of the Conchords includes a Rube-Goldberg accident that destroys a mug.
• This Too Shall Pass (2010) — the promotional music video for OK Go's single features a giant Rube Goldberg machine working in sync with the song. Members of the band are bodily moved about and splattered with colored paint near the end of the video, which was recorded in a single, unedited long take in front of a live audience.

• MythBusters made a Rube Goldberg Machine in one of their Christmas Specials
• In an episode of the Nickelodeon tv show iCarly, Carly's older brother Spencer builds a Rube Goldberg device to feed his goldfish.
• In an episode of the Cartoon Network show Ed, Edd n Eddy, Edd and Eddy constructed a giant Rube Goldberg machine disguised as the Statue of Liberty in order to destroy Ed's violin, but it failed because Edd purposely sabotaged it by luring Ed away from the target.
• On the July 4, 2010, Google changed its logo into a Rube Goldberg machine in honor of Rube Goldberg's birthday.
• In the cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Mystery Inc. often used a Rube Goldberg trap designed by Fred to capture the villain of the episode, for such things as throwing a net. Often however, the said trap would fail, with the outcome usually being that Shaggy or Scooby-Doo would be captured instead, or the trap would miss.
• In the Suite Life on Deck episode "A London Carol", Zack constructs a Rube Goldberg machine to trick Mr. Moseby instead of waking up and getting to work on time.
• In the Cartoon Network TV series Adventure Time, Finn makes a Rube Goldberg-like machine to help everyone who needs to solve their problems.
• The 2010 Times Square SUV bomb was referred to as a "Rube Goldberg contraption" by James Cavanaugh, a former ATF agent working with New York City to investigate the attempted terrorist act.
• Rube Goldberg machines are featured repeatedly in the movies of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. They are a major topic of the black comedy film Delicatessen, most notably because of the contraptions with which Aurore Interligator unsuccessfully tries to kill herself. Much of The City of Lost Children is set in a Rube Goldberg-like laboratory, and it's a prominent theme of Micmacs.

Games

• Mouse Trap (1963) — classic board game in which a Rube Goldberg style mousetrap is built and operated
• The Incredible Machine, a video game
• Garry's Mod, another video game mod which can create Rube Goldberg machines
• Armadillo Run, a videogame where the goal is to move a ball to certain point
• Marble Drop (1997)
• Crazy Machines (2005)
• Fallout 3, in the Gold Ribbon Grocers at the location Jury Street Metro Station
• Halo 3 and Halo Reach, Rube Goldberg machines have been created in both games using Forge
• Tinkerbox, a Rube Goldberg-esque game for the iPad
• Minecraft, as Rube Goldberg machines are very popular
• The Powder Toy, People Make Good Rube Goldberg Machines

See also

• Turboencabulator
• W. Heath Robinson
• Storm P
• Rolling Ball Sculpture
• Deathtrap
• Booby trap
• Gyro Gearloose
• Domino effect
• Veeblefetzer

External links

• The Official Rube Goldberg Web Site
• 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
• Friday After Thanksgiving (FAT) chain reaction competition at the MIT Museum
• Rube Goldberg at Curlie