According to Rube Goldberg (1883-1970), people will create very elaborate and difficult ways to reach their goals...sometimes and USUALLY when a simple path or action will suffice.

Mankind seems to have a nearly uncontrollable urge to complicate matters which, really, are usually quite basic.

Now, Rube would have grown up during a very creative time during the Industrial Revolution. Therefore, what he saw as a boy and a young man - the machines, the new inventions - took up a lot of his attention and this time period gave him an extremely unique perspective on life that should not be overlooked.

Many of the first inventions and machines weren't very practical. They were made simply because they COULD be made. Technology had finally arrived in Rube's day, to give the world something much much more powerful than 'utility'....the industrial revolution brought mankind something that mankind was ready to absorb - this 'something' might be called, in part - "DISTRACTION"

In any case, Ruben Goldberg grabbed this notion up and ran with it like no other person could.

Born July 4, 1883, Reuben Garret L. Goldberg's parents wanted him to be an engineer. He received a good education and did become an engineer for a while (grad 1904), working for the city of San Francisco.

A very different calling steered him away from engineering, and Rube Goldberg is primarily known for his cartooning. He was a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle for a short time before finding a more permanent position at another San Franciso publication called, the San Francisco Bulletin. This is where he worked until moving to New York around 1907.

He worked for several employers in New York and put out cartoons at a rapid pace, in great numbers - even creating and distributing several series' simultaneously. Some of the series titles: "Foolish Questions," "Lala Palooza," "Mike and Ike," "The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club."

One of Goldberg's most notable characters was "Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts." - "Professor Butts." Through this character, Goldberg doled out his social commentary in large doses - about how people create convoluted, difficult ways to accomplish simple tasks.

Goldberg would draw variations of Professor Butts' laboratory with the Professor working on elaborate machines with numerous stages and functions - to accomplish simple actions.

For instance, the goal might be to water a plant. In this case, a lever might be pressed - releasing a marble - that drops in a cup - that spins around bumping into another lever, which is tied to a string of a hamster cage, the door of which opens when the string tightens, letting loose a hamster to chew on a rope - which is tied to a sandbag, which falls once the rope is severed, knocking against a watering can, tipping it so that it will drizzle water on the plant.

Really - it would just be easier and infinitely more efficient to just pick up the watering can and water the plant, right?

Ah - but then where would the fun, the 'invention,' the distraction be?