BrainStuff Classics: How Did Rube Goldberg Work?

Who was Rube Goldberg, and how did he come up with his famously weird contraptions? Learn the history behind this American cartoonist in today's classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/famous-inventors/who-was-rube-goldberg-and-what-are-his-contraptions.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbam here with another classic brain Stuff episode.
In this one, we dig into the strange and fascinating
machines drawn by Rube Goldberg and how he came to
be a household name. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Fogelbaum Here,

(00:23):
have you ever seen a Rube Goldberg contraption? They're gizmos
that perform a simple task in a ridiculously complicated manner.
For example, want to know how to get rid of
a mouse? Simple? There's a mouse trap that lures the
mouse with a painting of a piece of cheese. It
causes the mouse to step on a hot stove, jump
to an escalator, fall on a boxing glove, and get

(00:44):
knocked into a rocket that sends him to the moon.
What could be easier? The mouse trap was one of
many cartoons by Ruben Goldberg, a rock star cartoonist of
the early nine hundreds. According to Renny Prittican, chief curator
at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, Goldberg drew
thousands of cartoons of wacky inventions that were syndicated in

(01:05):
newspapers all over the United States. His name became synonymous
with entertainingly absurd machinery that complicates simple tasks. In one
the Miriam Webster Dictionary included the term Rube Goldberg, making
Goldberg the only person whose name is listed as an
adjective in the dictionary. According to Smithsonian dot com, Goldberg,

(01:26):
who was born in San Francisco in eighteen eighty three,
was originally an engineer. He graduated from the College of
Mining Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in
nineteen o four. For six months, he mapped water and
sewer lines for San Francisco until he could stand it
no longer. He then took a lower paying job cartooning
at the San Francisco Chronicle. His granddaughter Jennifer George says

(01:49):
what he cared about most was if he made you laugh.
He book The Art of Rube Goldberg describes his extensive
output of cartoons, writing, and even sculpture up until his
death in nine teen seventy. Goldberg left San Francisco for
New York in nineteen o seven and was hired by
the New York Evening Mail. One of his early cartoons
for the newspapers showed an injured man who had fallen

(02:10):
from a fifty story building and a woman asking are
you hurt? The man replies, no, I am taking my
beauty sleep. It was a hit, and over the next
two years he drew four hundred and forty nine more
in the Foolish Questions series. Readers loved sending in suggestions.
He also created a series called I'm the Guy. It
featured statements such as I'm the guy who put hobo

(02:32):
and hoboken and I'm the guy who puts sand in
the sandwich, starting a national fad. Goldberg's invention drawings began
in nineteen twelve and made him into a household name.
According to an exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in
San Francisco, the first was the simple mosquito exterminator. Here's
what's going on. A mosquito looking to bite. A sleeping

(02:54):
man enters a window. A walks along the board, baited
by small pieces of steak, but then falls on counious
because of chloroform fumes from a sponge b and falls
onto a spring loaded platform see it. Then wakes up,
looks through the telescope d to see the reflection of
the sleeper's bald head and a mirror E which it
mistakes for the moon outside the window, and this jumps

(03:14):
off that spring loaded platform through the empty telescope see
through D and hits the mirror, then falling into a
trash can f For the next twenty years, Goldberg provided
a new cartoon invention about every two weeks. He continued
on a less frequent basis intil he invented the character
Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, who created machines to open screen doors,

(03:38):
shine shoes, and find soap dropped from the bathtub. According
to the art of Rube Goldberg, this character was inspired
by two professors that Goldberg found particularly boring at the
College of Mining Engineering, Samuel B. Christie, who lectured at
length on time and motion efficiency, and Frederick Slate, who
once showed students the bear Dick, a convoluted machine meant

(03:58):
to measure the weight a the earth. Adam Gopnik wrote
in his introduction to the book that the invention cartoons
mocked the elaborate world of machinery by mocking the larger
idea of efficiency. Gopnick wrote that Goldberg had a poetic
intuition common to all great cartoonists. Goldberg was an early
voice questioning the use to which technology is put and

(04:20):
the benefits of supposed labor saving devices. Instead of simplifying life,
they complicated. Predican says the theme is pertinent today because
in the rush to create and sell new technology. Predicans said,
we are ignoring a public conversation is this good for
us or not? In Goldberg started drawing political cartoons. In them,

(04:41):
he began to comment on the rise of fascism. Prediction
said he got a lot of criticism for it, including
threats to himself and his family. Among his famous political
cartoons was a scene in a Middle Eastern desert. Two
figures trudge along to parallel paths that never meet. One
figure is labeled Arab and the other jew. Cartoon shows

(05:03):
a small house balanced on an enormous nuclear missile balanced
on a precipice. The title is piece today this cartoon
want to pull its surprise. Pretticin said he had a
huge impact on his time. Culturally, cartoonists were immensely popular.
They were really cultural heroes, and Rube Goldberg devices live

(05:23):
on today in the Rube Goldberg Machine contest, which pits
school kids against each other in an effort to design
and build wacky machinery. You can google some of their
efforts and check them out on YouTube. Today's episode is
based on the article who was Rube Goldberg and What
are his Contraptions? On how stuff works dot Com written

(05:45):
by Stale simonton brain Stuff's production of I Heart Radio
and partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it
is produced by Tyler Klein. Four more podcasts from my
heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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