Rube Goldberg gave English language a new phrase – a “Rube Goldberg device”. Basically, a contraption designed to execute a simple job in a complicated manner. Remember those Tom and Jerry cartoons that featured an elaborate series of mechanisms set up by Tom for the purpose of getting Jerry, all this when a simple mousetrap would have sufficed. Same with Wile E. Coyote who is still trying to get Roadrunner with those silly Acme products.
Wonder what kind of a combination MAD and Goldberg would have made, but he pre-dated the MAD era. However Al Jaffe’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” was inspired by Goldberg’s “Foolish Questions”. Goldberg’s first remarkable fictional invention was an automatic weight loss machine that made use of a lump of wax, a bomb, a helium-filled balloon, a very hot stove, and a doughnut down a slope to capture a fat guy in a sound-proof and food-proof prison from which escape is only possible when he loses enough weight to wriggle free.
Goldberg’s oeuvre was impressive, his output prolific, and his range impressive. Although he has achieved lasting fame as the inventor of the eponymous fictional devices he was also a political cartoonist of note. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for his political cartoons. His syndicated cartoons included Boob McNutt, Lala Palooza and Mike & Ike (They Look Alike). All these were popular in their time and had a successful run with the newspapers. The National Cartoonists’ Society’s Reuben Award is named after one Reuben Lucius Goldberg.
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