Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbam here with another classic brain Stuff episode.
Speaker 1: In this one, we dig into the strange and fascinating
Speaker 1: machines drawn by Rube Goldberg and how he came to
Speaker 1: be a household name. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Fogelbaum Here,
Speaker 1: have you ever seen a Rube Goldberg contraption? They're gizmos
Speaker 1: that perform a simple task in a ridiculously complicated manner.
Speaker 1: For example, want to know how to get rid of
Speaker 1: a mouse? Simple? There's a mouse trap that lures the
Speaker 1: mouse with a painting of a piece of cheese. It
Speaker 1: causes the mouse to step on a hot stove, jump
Speaker 1: to an escalator, fall on a boxing glove, and get
Speaker 1: knocked into a rocket that sends him to the moon.
Speaker 1: What could be easier? The mouse trap was one of
Speaker 1: many cartoons by Ruben Goldberg, a rock star cartoonist of
Speaker 1: the early nine hundreds. According to Renny Prittican, chief curator
Speaker 1: at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, Goldberg drew
Speaker 1: thousands of cartoons of wacky inventions that were syndicated in
Speaker 1: newspapers all over the United States. His name became synonymous
Speaker 1: with entertainingly absurd machinery that complicates simple tasks. In one
Speaker 1: the Miriam Webster Dictionary included the term Rube Goldberg, making
Speaker 1: Goldberg the only person whose name is listed as an
Speaker 1: adjective in the dictionary. According to Smithsonian dot com, Goldberg,
Speaker 1: who was born in San Francisco in eighteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: was originally an engineer. He graduated from the College of
Speaker 1: Mining Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in
Speaker 1: nineteen o four. For six months, he mapped water and
Speaker 1: sewer lines for San Francisco until he could stand it
Speaker 1: no longer. He then took a lower paying job cartooning
Speaker 1: at the San Francisco Chronicle. His granddaughter Jennifer George says
Speaker 1: what he cared about most was if he made you laugh.
Speaker 1: He book The Art of Rube Goldberg describes his extensive
Speaker 1: output of cartoons, writing, and even sculpture up until his
Speaker 1: death in nine teen seventy. Goldberg left San Francisco for
Speaker 1: New York in nineteen o seven and was hired by
Speaker 1: the New York Evening Mail. One of his early cartoons
Speaker 1: for the newspapers showed an injured man who had fallen
Speaker 1: from a fifty story building and a woman asking are
Speaker 1: you hurt? The man replies, no, I am taking my
Speaker 1: beauty sleep. It was a hit, and over the next
Speaker 1: two years he drew four hundred and forty nine more
Speaker 1: in the Foolish Questions series. Readers loved sending in suggestions.
Speaker 1: He also created a series called I'm the Guy. It
Speaker 1: featured statements such as I'm the guy who put hobo
Speaker 1: and hoboken and I'm the guy who puts sand in
Speaker 1: the sandwich, starting a national fad. Goldberg's invention drawings began
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve and made him into a household name.
Speaker 1: According to an exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, the first was the simple mosquito exterminator. Here's
Speaker 1: what's going on. A mosquito looking to bite. A sleeping
Speaker 1: man enters a window. A walks along the board, baited
Speaker 1: by small pieces of steak, but then falls on counious
Speaker 1: because of chloroform fumes from a sponge b and falls
Speaker 1: onto a spring loaded platform see it. Then wakes up,
Speaker 1: looks through the telescope d to see the reflection of
Speaker 1: the sleeper's bald head and a mirror E which it
Speaker 1: mistakes for the moon outside the window, and this jumps
Speaker 1: off that spring loaded platform through the empty telescope see
Speaker 1: through D and hits the mirror, then falling into a
Speaker 1: trash can f For the next twenty years, Goldberg provided
Speaker 1: a new cartoon invention about every two weeks. He continued
Speaker 1: on a less frequent basis intil he invented the character
Speaker 1: Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, who created machines to open screen doors,
Speaker 1: shine shoes, and find soap dropped from the bathtub. According
Speaker 1: to the art of Rube Goldberg, this character was inspired
Speaker 1: by two professors that Goldberg found particularly boring at the
Speaker 1: College of Mining Engineering, Samuel B. Christie, who lectured at
Speaker 1: length on time and motion efficiency, and Frederick Slate, who
Speaker 1: once showed students the bear Dick, a convoluted machine meant
Speaker 1: to measure the weight a the earth. Adam Gopnik wrote
Speaker 1: in his introduction to the book that the invention cartoons
Speaker 1: mocked the elaborate world of machinery by mocking the larger
Speaker 1: idea of efficiency. Gopnick wrote that Goldberg had a poetic
Speaker 1: intuition common to all great cartoonists. Goldberg was an early
Speaker 1: voice questioning the use to which technology is put and
Speaker 1: the benefits of supposed labor saving devices. Instead of simplifying life,
Speaker 1: they complicated. Predican says the theme is pertinent today because
Speaker 1: in the rush to create and sell new technology. Predicans said,
Speaker 1: we are ignoring a public conversation is this good for
Speaker 1: us or not? In Goldberg started drawing political cartoons. In them,
Speaker 1: he began to comment on the rise of fascism. Prediction
Speaker 1: said he got a lot of criticism for it, including
Speaker 1: threats to himself and his family. Among his famous political
Speaker 1: cartoons was a scene in a Middle Eastern desert. Two
Speaker 1: figures trudge along to parallel paths that never meet. One
Speaker 1: figure is labeled Arab and the other jew. Cartoon shows
Speaker 1: a small house balanced on an enormous nuclear missile balanced
Speaker 1: on a precipice. The title is piece today this cartoon
Speaker 1: want to pull its surprise. Pretticin said he had a
Speaker 1: huge impact on his time. Culturally, cartoonists were immensely popular.
Speaker 1: They were really cultural heroes, and Rube Goldberg devices live
Speaker 1: on today in the Rube Goldberg Machine contest, which pits
Speaker 1: school kids against each other in an effort to design
Speaker 1: and build wacky machinery. You can google some of their
Speaker 1: efforts and check them out on YouTube. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article who was Rube Goldberg and What
Speaker 1: are his Contraptions? On how stuff works dot Com written
Speaker 1: by Stale simonton brain Stuff's production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it
Speaker 1: is produced by Tyler Klein. Four more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.