[[wiki-architecture]] · [[Urban Planning and City Architecture]] · [[ARCHITECTURE]] · [[000]] # Rube Goldberg machine A Rube Goldberg machine, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction–type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in a comically overcomplicated way. Usually, these machines consist of a series of simple unrelated devices; the action of each triggers the initiation of the next, eventually resulting in achieving a stated goal. More recently, such machines have been fully constructed for entertainment (for example, a breakfast scene in Pee-wee's Big Adventure) and in Rube Goldberg competitions. == History == The first Rube Goldberg machine was drawn by Rube Goldberg in 1914, titled the Automatic Weight-Reducing Machine drawn for the "Inventions!" section of the New York Evening Mail. In the cartoon, the machine utilizes a variety of objects to get an overweight person to become trapped in a hole. The man is then starved until he is thin enough to pass through the hole and escape. Another such machine is featured in Goldberg's 1931 cartoon Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin, which was later reprinted in a few book collections, including the postcard book Rube Goldberg's Inventions! and the hardcover Rube Goldberg: Inventions, both compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. It was also famously featured on a US postage stamp in 1995. The term "Rube Goldberg" was being used in print to describe elaborate contraptions by 1928, and appeared in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language in 1966 meaning "having a fantastically complicated improvised appearance", or "deviously complex and impractical". Because Rube Goldberg machines are contraptions derived from tinkering with the tools close at hand, parallels have been drawn with evolutionary processes. More recently, Rube Goldberg machines have been used to educate students. Organizations, such as Brains & Motions utilize such machines to educate STEM and engineering principles, such as simple machines, kinetic and potential energy, work, momentum, and other concepts. == In media == Many of Goldberg's ideas were utilized in popular culture for the comedic effect of creating a crazy rigmarole for a simple task. In The Goonies, a Rube Goldberg machine is used to open up a picket fence. In Pee-wee's Big Adventure and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Rube Goldberg-like machines are used to make breakfast. Other Rube Goldberg machines are also used to make breakfast in Back to the Future and Back to the Future III. In Ernest Goes to Jail, a Rube Goldberg machine is used to turn on a television set. In The Money Pit, a series of crashing boards, falling cans, and other mishaps in a construction site ends up launching the character Walter Fielding into a fountain In Wallace and Gromit, the character Wallace creates and uses many Rube Goldberg-like machines for a numerous number of tasks (such as getting dressed). The inspiration for these contraptions, however, is the British cartoonist W. Heath Robinson In the OK Go music video for This Too Shall Pass, a Rube Goldberg machine spanning along a half-mile course and utilizing over 700 household objects is used to shoot the members of the band with paint from a paint gun. In the board game Mouse Trap, players assemble a Rube Goldberg machine to trap their opponent's mouse. Once a player's mouse is trapped, that player is eliminated from the game. Last person standing is then crowned the winner. == Competitions == In early 1987, Purdue University in Indiana started the annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, organized by the Phi chapter of Theta Tau, a national engineering fraternity. In 2009, the Epsilon chapter of Theta Tau established a similar annual contest at the University of California, Berkeley. Since around 1997, the kinetic artist Arthur Ganson has been the emcee of the annual "Friday After Thanksgiving" (FAT) competition sponsored by the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Teams of contestants construct elaborate Rube Goldberg style chain-reaction machines on tables arranged around a large gymnasium. Each apparatus is linked by a string to its predecessor and successor machine. The initial string is ceremonially pulled, and the ensuing events are videotaped in closeup, and simultaneously projected on large screens for viewing by the live audience. After the entire cascade of events has finished, prizes are then awarded in various categories and age levels. Videos from several previous years' contests are viewable on the MIT Museum website. The Chain Reaction Contraption Contest is an annual event hosted at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in which high school teams each build a Rube Goldberg machine to complete some simple task (which changes from year to year) in 20 steps or more (with some additional constraints on size, timing, safety, etc.). On the TV show Food Network Challenge, competitors in 2011 were once required to create a Rube Goldberg machine out of sugar. An event called 'Mission Possible' in the Science Olympiad involves students building a Rube Goldberg-like device to perform a certain series of tasks. An England competition-based reality TV show named Contraption Masters has contestants create Rube Goldberg machines in a specified time limit, then test their machines. The machines are then scored under creativity, number of interventions, and number of steps. The Rube Goldberg Institute holds many annual Rube Goldberg machine contests. In addition to the Live Rube Goldberg Machine contest, the Institute holds a number of virtual contests, such as the Virtual Rube Goldberg Machine contest. The Institute also holds the "Rube Goldberg Unreal Engine Challenge", a competition in partnership with Epic Games where contestants create a simulated Rube Goldberg machine in the video game engine Unreal Engine, and the Rube Goldberg NASEF Minecraft Challenge in partnership with the North America Scholastic Esports Federation where contestants create a simulated Rube Goldberg machine in the video game Minecraft. The RGI also holds the "Rube Goldberg Crazy Contraption Cartoon Contest", in which contestants draw a cartoon depicting a Rube Goldberg machine. == Similar expressions and artists worldwide == Australia – Cartoonist Bruce Petty depicted such themes as the economy, international relations or other social issues as complicated interlocking machines that manipulate, or are manipulated by, people. Denmark – Devices akin to Goldberg's machines are known as Storm P maskiner ('Storm P machines'), after the Danish inventor and cartoonist Robert Storm Petersen (1882–1949). India – The humorist and children's author Sukumar Ray, in his nonsense poem "Abol tabol" had a character (Uncle) with a Rube Goldberg-like machine called "Uncle's contraption"(khuror kol). This word is used colloquially in Bengali to mean a complicated and useless object. Italy – Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci described an alarm clock-esque device which, utilizing a slow drip of water, would fill a vessel which then operated a lever to wake the sleeper. Japan — Such devices are often called "Pythagorean devices" or "Pythagoras switch". PythagoraSwitch (ピタゴラスイッチ, Pitagora Suicchi) is the name of a TV show featuring such devices. Switzerland – Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Swiss artists known for their art installation movie Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go, 1987). It documents a 30-minute-long causal chain assembled of everyday objects, resembling a Rube Goldberg machine. United Kingdom – The term "Heath Robinson" was in use by 1917, referring to the fantastical comic machinery drawn by British cartoonist and illustrator W. Heath Robinson. See also Rowland Emett, active in the 1950s. The TV show The Great Egg Race (1979 to 1986) also involved making physical contraptions to solve set problems, and often resulted in Heath-Robinsonian devices. United States – Tim Hawkinson made several art pieces that contain complicated apparatuses that are generally used to make abstract art or music. Many of them are centered on the randomness of other devices (such as a slot machine) and are dependent on them to create some menial effect. == See also == == References == - [[Design/Building Typologies/Hospitality Architecture]] - [[Building Services/Building Performance/Indoor Air Quality]] - [[Building Construction/Specifications and Detailing/Joint Design]] - [[Environmental Design/Passive Design Strategies]] - [[Building Services/Building Performance/Acoustics]] - [[Professional Practice/Codes & Standards/National Building Code of India/Part 09 - Plumbing Services/Section 4 - Gas Supply]] - [[Professional Practice/Codes & Standards/National Building Code of India/Part 04 - Fire and Life Safety]] - [[Professional Practice/Construction Management/Contract Administration]] - [[Landscape]] - [[Building Services/Building Performance/Building Envelope]] == External links == rubegoldberg.org Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Oral History Interview, 1970 Annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest Detailed specifications of an award-winning Rube Goldberg machine from the New York City science fair Friday After Thanksgiving (FAT) chain reaction competition at the MIT Museum