(noun) a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation.
I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite scenes in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure is when he gets breakfast ready by turning on a fan and lighting a candle (thus beginning his Rube Goldberg machine). As a kid, I always thought that machines of that nature were a movie trick. I never knew that there was a name for them and that they can actually be made.
But who was Rube Goldberg?
Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author.
Best known for his INVENTIONS, Rube’s early years as an engineer informed his most acclaimed works. A Rube Goldberg contraption – an elaborate set of arms, wheels, gears, handles, cups, and rods, put in motion by balls, canary cages, pails, boots, bathtubs, paddles, and live animals – takes a simple task and makes it extraordinarily complicated. He had solutions for How To Get The Cotton Out Of An Aspirin Bottle, imagined a Self-Operating Napkin, and created a Simple Alarm Clock – to name just a few of his hilariously depicted drawings.
from the official Rube Goldberg website
See the top 10 movies with Rube Goldberg Machines
and a cool little Honda commericial:
getting older & wiser... 