Rube Goldberg was a famous cartoonist known for his political cartoons and the Rube Goldberg Machine. He had an engineering degree and worked briefly as a civil engineer. He gained recognition as a cartoonist in New York and married Irma Seeman, with whom he had two children. His most memorable designs were the Goldberg machines, which commented on the dangers of bureaucracy. He founded the National Cartoonist Society and won the Pulitzer Prize. His legacy lives on in Rube Goldberg machine contests.
Reuben or Rube Goldberg was a famous cartoonist, best known for his political cartoons, and the Rube Goldberg Machine, a variety of animated drawings of exceptionally complicated machines that did very simple things. He was also known for his cartoon series, such as Boob McNutt, and Mike and Ike, and the 1930s feature film Soup to Nuts which launched the career of the Three Stooges.
Born in 1883 in San Francisco, Rube Goldberg attended Lowell High School, which has the distinction of being the oldest public school west of the Mississippi. He completed college at the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 with an engineering degree, a more practical degree that his father insisted he graduate. He only worked for the city of San Francisco as a civil engineer for a short time. Probably the best way he showed his engineering background was in the subsequent creation of the Goldberg machines.
Rube Goldberg has cultivated not only a passion for comics, but also the talent needed to be successful. Although he first worked as a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle, he was picked up by the San Francisco Bulletin in the mid-1900s to work as a general and political cartoonist. In 1907, Goldberg moved to New York and freelanced for several newspapers. His work slowly gained recognition, and in 1915 he gained national recognition.
In 1916, he married Irma Seeman and the couple had two children, who would add to their contributions to the art and entertainment industries over the years. Goldberg insisted that the boys change their last names when his political comments during World War II began to inspire vicious hate messages. The two boys changed their surname to George. Thomas George rose to fame as a painter and George W. George wrote and produced films.
As mentioned, the Goldberg machines, designed by his cartoon character, Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, were his most memorable designs. These machines might end up with tasks as simple as opening a window or retrieving mail. They were a commentary on the dangers of any kind of system, especially a bureaucratic one, that made simple things the hardest way possible. You’ll still hear modern references to the Rube Goldberg machine, when people observe how a simple task is made overly complicated by bureaucracy.
Goldberg’s understanding of how America’s fascination with technology tends to make people lazier is echoed most seriously in today’s problems with obesity. We have a variety of machines that do simple work for us, like changing the channels on our televisions, which makes us a less active nation.
In the late 1940s, Goldberg founded the National Cartoonist Society and was also the recipient of numerous honors throughout his career. These include the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for an insightful drawing depicting the deep-seated concerns of nuclear proliferation that began to arise at the end of World War II. His work has been exhibited in numerous museums and one of his Goldberg machines has been commemorated on a US postage stamp. His career ended with his death in 1970, but his legacy lives on in many Rube Goldberg machine contests, in which high school or college students try to design complex machines that do practically nothing.
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