CARTOONIST RUBE GOLDBERG’S MACHINES TURNED SIMPLE TASKS INTO EPIC SPECTACLES

Jackson Arn

Rube Goldberg, Rube Goldberg Inventions United States Postal Service Stamp, date unknown. © Rube Goldberg Inc. Courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish History.

It’s shocking, simply shocking, that the American people have forgotten the name of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. From 1914 to 1964, the brilliant inventor trotted out a series of groundbreaking devices, among them an automatic stamp-licker, a self-operating napkin, and a spoon for fishing stubborn olives out of the bottoms of tall jars. Granted, the devices were usually a little bulky—the stamp-licker required a hat rack, a bucket of water, a live dog, and an umbrella—but that was just another part of their charm.

It’s likely that you’ve never heard of the esteemed Professor Butts, but the name of his creator, Rube Goldberg, should ring a bell. Goldberg’s cartoons—the subject of an exhibition opening October 12th at the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) in Philadelphia—usually featured hare-brained contraptions designed to complete simple tasks in the most difficult ways imaginable. They appeared in American newspapers for most of the first half of the 20th century, and today, they live on in endless homages, spin-offs, and rip-offs: board games, Simpsons gags, indie music videos, horror franchises, and Sesame Street cutaways.

Since 1931, Goldberg’s name has appeared in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of the English Language, meaning “accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply”; it’s also been affixed to prestigious awards, engineering contests, and postage stamps. The former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin summed up Goldberg’s enormous appeal like so: “He focuses ingeniously and devastatingly on those peculiar follies and hypocrisies of daily life from which spring the wonderful American standard of living and the American genius for technology.”

How appropriate that he was born on the Fourth of July. In 1883, the year Goldberg came into the world, the Wright Brothers hadn’t yet slipped the surly bonds of earth, and Henry Ford was a humble farmer who liked to tinker with engines in his spare time. In the following decades, America would reinvent itself as the world’s preeminent technological superpower, and Goldberg would become the chief chronicler—and affectionate satirist—of his country’s mechanical misadventures.

Goldberg’s education may have given him a unique perspective on these misadventures. He was born and raised in California, and spent much of his spare time drawing and painting. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1904 with a degree in engineering, he worked for the water and sewer department of San Francisco. An offer from the San Francisco Chronicle—at the time, the largest periodical on the West Coast—proved too tempting to ignore, and Goldberg became the paper’s sports cartoonist. In 1907, he accepted a staff cartoonist job at the New York Evening Mail, where he’d stay for many years, eventually becoming one of the earliest beneficiaries of mass syndication. By the end of World War I, “Rube Goldberg machines”—always credited to the artist’s protagonist, Professor Butts—could be found in the pages of hundreds of newspapers, and Goldberg was regularly billed as the nation’s most popular cartoonist………………

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-cartoonist-rube-goldbergs-machines-turned-simple-tasks-epic-spectacles