by Angie Pollock

Created on: July 04, 2010   Last Updated: March 18, 2012

Born in 1883, Rueben Lucius Goldberg or Rube Goldberg was an engineer, cartoonists, author, and sculptor. However, Goldberg was best known for his quirky machinist cartoons that included a group of complex mechanisms that each performed a task. He would use everyday items and contraptions that reacted together to give an end result – like a domino effect only using different items and inventions.

Born in San Francisco, California, Rube Goldberg began his art at the young age of 4 when he would trace illustrations from the book “History of the United States”. His passion for drawing was not encouraged by his father. Instead, his father sent him to the University of California at Berkeley to become and engineer where he graduated in 1904.

After a short stint of helping design San Francisco sewer systems, Goldberg took a cut in pay to work for the San Francisco Chronicle where he could express himself with his passion of drawing. His cartoons were rarely used by the paper and to stay on the payroll, Goldberg did janitorial work. That was until Goldberg was given the assignment to sketch athletes at different sporting events.

The newspaper bigwigs began to realize the importance of pictures to their paper’s readers. The paper began a color comic section that was created by artists who had worked for big names like Saturday Evening Post.

Rube Goldberg would become a household name in the print industry, creating characters like Lala Palooza and Mike & Ike. The character “Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts” is perhaps the one which Goldberg is most remembered. This comical series included the humorous inventions which later would be called “Rube Goldberg’s Inventions”.  Goldberg’s “Self-Operating Napkin” was honored by the US Postal Service when it was included as one of the postage stamps included in the 1995 Comic Strip Classics stamp series.

The imaginative cartoons ended when Goldberg retired in 1964. His sculptures in bronze are also highly recognized along with his successful career as an innovative inventor for humorous contraptions.

The influence of the Machine Age would set the tone for Goldberg’s quirky art that involved simple items that could fulfill complex tasks. In 1948, Rube Goldberg won the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartoon that warned of atomic weapons’ dangers. Just prior to his death in 1970, Rube Goldberg was honored in Washington DC when The Smithsonian Institute displayed different works from the artist’s life. Goldberg was the first cartoonist to be privileged with such an honor.

Born the 4th of July, Rube Goldberg continues to be remembered and honored for the work we still enjoy today. In 2010, Google honored Goldberg with an inventive cartoon on Goldberg’s birthday on the Google search homepage.

• http://www.biography.com/articles/Rube-Goldberg-9314 372
• http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/rube-goldberg/
• http://www.mousetrapcontraptions.com/history-4.html

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