Rube Goldberg: Inventions! [Hardcover]

Maynard Frank Wolfe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 2000

Welcome to the world of that archetypal American, Reuben Lucius Goldberg, the dean of American cartoonists for most of the twentieth century. For more than sixty-five years, Rube Goldberg's syndicated cartoons -- he produced more than fifty strips -- appeared in as many as a thousand newspapers annually He was earning a hundred thousand dollars a year...in 1915. He wrote hit songs and stories and was, in succession, a star in vaudeville, motion pictures, newsreels, radio, and, finally, television.

He even, at the age of eighty, began an entirely new career as a sculptor, and, in inimitable Goldberg fashion, was soon selling his work to galleries, collectors, and museums all over the world. Sure, Rube won the Pulitzer Prize. Every year "some" cartoonist wins the Pulitzer Prize. But the National Cartoonists Society "named" its award -- the Reuben -- after you-know-who.

But it was Rube's "Inventions," those drawings of intricate and whimsical machines, that earned Rube his very own entry in "Webster's New World Dictionary: "

Rube Goldberg..."adjective."..Designating any very complicated invention, machine, scheme, etc. laboriously contrived to perform a seemingly simple operation.

"Inventions," even the earliest ones that date from 1914, are still being republished and recycled today as they have been over the last eighty-five years. New generations rediscover and enjoy them every day, even though their creator cleaned his pens, put the cap on his bottle of Higgins Black India Ink, and cleared his drawing board for the last time almost thirty years ago. The inventions inspired the National Rube Goldberg(TM) Machine Contest, held annually at Purdue University, an "Olympics of complexity" in which hundreds of engineering students from American universities and colleges -- and even middle and high schools -- compete to build and run Rube Goldberg invention machines that perform, in twenty or more steps, the annual challenge.

In 1970 the Smithsonian Institution hosted a show honoring Rube Goldberg's lifework. In a life filled with superlatives, it hardly needs mentioning that Rube is the only living cartoonist and humorist to have been so honored. In his speech at the show's opening, Rube said, "Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch -- terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean..."

So welcome to a collection of spiral staircases and veal cutlets -- to the inventions of an American original, a creative genius named Rube Goldberg.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Rube Goldberg is so renowned for his zany and splendidly overcomplicated "inventions" that his name has made it into dictionaries as an adjective. "Used for describing Any very complicated invention, machine, scheme, etc., laboriously contrived to perform a seemingly simple operation" is the entry in Webster's New World Dictionary. According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the adjective means "accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply." The inventions appeared in newspapers every day from 1914 to 1964 as a single panel of drawings with an elaborate caption. Wolfe, a photojournalist who also holds patents for product design, presents a collection of Goldberg's inventions, comic strips, editorial cartoons, and sketches and provides a biography of Goldberg. The reader is easily lost in contemplation of such Goldbergian wonders as "Simple Way to Open an Egg without Dropping It in Your Lap," "Simple Orange-Squeezing Machine" (below) and "Easy Way for Tired Tourist to Enjoy Italian Art."

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

About the Author

After a successful career as a photographer/writer, and then as an award-winning product designer, Maynard Frank Wolfe founded Rube Goldberg Inc. with the artist's heirs in 1994. As President of Rube Goldberg Inc.Born in Maine and raised in San Francisco, Wolfe now lives in New York.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684867249
• ISBN-13: 978-0684867243
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The zaniest universe, December 19, 2000

By 

Harry Rolnick (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rube Goldberg: Inventions! (Hardcover)

I have a real problem with this book. Namely, I can't get on a New York bus or subway without having dozen strangers leaning over me to look at the cartoons, first with curiosity and then suddenly bursting into hysterical laughter. It's that kind of book. The name "Rube Goldberg:" is supposed to vaguely resemble a machine more complicated than it should be. But as I discovered here, the inventions are more than over-complicated.. They are zany, zappy, and have the weird quantum logic of a parallel universe existing in some mad scientist's crazy mind. Take a "modest mosquito-bite scratcher", which is modest if you have dogs, cannons and worms all hooked up in tandem. Or a "self-scrubbing bath brush", which is easy once you teach a monkey to play outfield and hook the monkey up with a millwheel, a jack-in-the-box and an organ grinder. But why go on? Each time I open the book, one of the hundreds and hundreds of insane worlds plays itself out with kind of an eerie reality. Maynard Frank Wolfe has written a decent down-to-earth biography of the real Rube Goldberg , who (obviously!) started his long life as an engineer. But the amazing and endless cartoons are simply the funniest and best things around. At first, I thought of Leonardo de Vinci on LSD. But the more realistic affinity is Gary Larson. Both Larson and Goldberg turn science on its head, with their own creations both defying and DEIFYING logic. Now if only he'd invented a way to make strangers on a subway train go away! Let them buy their OWN book!

37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars They don't make them like ole' Rube anymore!, November 3, 2000

By 

Harvey D Stansell (Fairfield, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rube Goldberg: Inventions! (Hardcover)

Rube Goldberg is justly famous for producing ingenious cartoons that show the most complicated ways imaginable to complete the most mundane of tasks. Any boomer, tweener, Gen-xer, teen, or kid who has played "Mousetrap" has witnessed a "Goldberg". This book reproduces his cartoons and reveals his three-fold genius - as a humorist, an artist, and a master mechanic. Today, the comic pages seem to be oriented either strictly towards children (Rugrats, et. al.), or adults (Doonebury, Dilbert and their kin); either type can be digested in seconds. Goldberg's genius was to produce a hilarious piece of work that could be enjoyed by all ages and actually made his audience think! Buy this book to revel in this master.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Do it the hard way.", April 19, 2005

By 

J. Guild (Toronto,Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rube Goldberg: Inventions! (Hardcover)

Finding this book was a real treat.I haven't seen much of his work for a long time.Little wonder,since Rube died in 1970.Goldberg is a national treasure,not only for his Inventions,but also for many other art forms.He graduated as a Mining Engineer,did Vaudville,wrote songs and plays,was in Motion pictures,Newsreels,Radio,and TV.He also took up Sculpture at the age of 80 selling about 300 works to private collectors,galleries and museums.
He created his own artform and was a resounding success by his early 30's and remained so the rest of his life of 87 years.His cartooning skills reflected the early years of cartoons where the message was more important than the artwork;which really came into its own and exploded after WWII.That is,more like the stuff we saw from Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher and R F Outault's Yellow Kid.Generally speaking,after the war,the great change in artwork after WWII became the world of comics,such as Dick Tracy by Chester Gould,Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff and what we see today in Doonesbury by Gary Trudeau.
I can't remember if I ever saw any of Rube's cartoons in color and there is no use or mention of color in the book.While he still produced well after color became popular in comics and cartoons,the question remains unanswered.On his website there is a Machine Contest 2005 in color,but it is obviously not his work.Does anyone know if any of Rube's cartoons were printed in color?
Overall,this is an excellent book and does a good job on the life and work of an artist who entertained so many for so long.