Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg like device

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 - December 7, 1970) was a Pulitzer Prize -winning American cartoonist who was best known for a series of comic strip panels which showed complicated machines meant to perform simple tasks.

Born in San Fransisco, he studied engineering at the University of California at Berkley, eventually receiving a degree and going to work for San Fransisco's Water and Sewers Department. A sideline was his hobby of cartooning, and he would gain a job at a newspaper in the city; he would find almost immediate success, resulting in a job for New York City's Evening Mail newspaper, where he drew and submitted his cartoons for daily publication. Rube drew a cartoon of the world on the brink of nuclear destruction for the New York Sun on June 22, 1947; he would be awarded the Pulitzer for it in 1948.

He stated that man generally did "maximum effort for minimum results" [1], and his cartoons reflected that, albeit in a comical way. His name would enter Webster's Dictionary as a "comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation."

Links[edit]

• Official site
• Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
• Bio from Toonopedia.com