Rube Goldberg

Who or What is Rube Goldberg?

Rube Goldberg (1883–1970) was a cartoonist who was best known for drawing fanciful and complicated machines that performed what was ultimately a simple task. In the example on the left, the subject’s act of moving food to his mouth triggered a series of operations that eventually wiped his mouth with a napkin. At the heart of any Rube Goldberg machine is a series of transformations of energy, such as gravitational potential energy, elastic potential energy, linear kinetic energy, rotational energy, magnetic energy, or electrical energy. Many Rube Goldberg devices use a variety of the six simple machines, too.