You may know Rube Goldberg’s work in cartoons from WWII or, more likely, from the engineering feats he drew in his cartoons that are associated with him.
Here is one of his cartoons that encompasses his work:
Here you can see the quintessential mechanism that uses several complex steps to complete one simple task. These Rube Goldberg Machines can be found in the game, Mouse Trap, the film, Peewee’s Big Adventure, in OK Go‘s new video for “This Too Shall Pass” and, where I first fell in love with it, at the Franklin Institute here in Philadelphia. It looked something like this:
I bring this up, because my favorite informational YouTube channel, Rocketboom, has dedicated an entire episode to him, and it made me think about how these Rube Goldberg machines have followed me throughout my life, from the first time i stood mesmerized in front of one.
Here are the videos of the machines I mentioned above, enjoy! Let me know of any that you’ve seen in the comments!
We’ll start these off with the Rocketboom video for some background:
Mouse Trap:
Peewee’s Big Adventure:
OK Go
