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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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
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 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,
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
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 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, 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 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 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 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, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.