What is it? XLIX

Rube's machines were a trifle more complex, and needed captions to explain them.

A very poor Heath Robinson.

Heath Robinson made witty social comment by drawing cartoons. Sometimes (but not always) these cartoons involved fanciful machines. He was equally capable of finding this humour in existing machines, such as the automatic toaster, or even in such contemporary fashions as new tastes in Modernist carpets or flats. The key was the humour and the machine was always secondary to that. Often the machine was fundamentally impossible (rather than merely ludicrously impractical)

- lifting the dome of St Pauls with a platoon and a block and tackle, the dowager's pekingese not merely breaking cocktail ice off an iceberg, but winching it ashore with a treadmill.

Rube Goldberg was an inventor who drew his creations. The design was the core, not the resultant drawing. He has more in common with Alexander Weyger than Robinson, and a similar approach to mechanicaal engineering. It's important to Goldberg that the machines work, or at least make some attempt to, and this often gives rise to clumsy illustrations with voluminous footnotes.

A better British analogue to Rube Goldberg might be Roland Emmett.

Roy Dennis:

Andy Dingley:

Whack! Slash! Bite! Knock it off, eh? They were both very good at what they did, and are excellent analogies for each other.

That's Rowland Emett -- who was a fine Rowland Emett, but no Rube Goldberg.

Rube Goldberg's cartoons had _explanations_ attached to them. That's about the worst thing you can do to any form of graphic art. Maybe the machines are funny, but he was a lousy cartoonist.

Roland, Rowland, Emmett or Emett - he spelled it with every possible variation (or at least was cited in period with every variation).

The aperature control is at the bottom. The top is a shutter control. I don't see the shutter itself; perhaps the aperture and the shutter are the same device, the film being insensitive enough to make the small opening not a concern.

It has a control to adjust the jaw width (for different sized pigeons). Or did you mean 274?

I don't remember the number now, but I was talking about that skeet flinger thing.

So what's with all the springs?

Thanks, Rich

In a way, yes. Both Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg were famous for drawing insanely complicated machines which accomplished silly or simple tasks-- Robinson in Great Britain, Goldberg here in the States. Basically, when you want to describe a really silly, slapdash, or crazily improvised system, their names are the shorthand to use in their respective countries. But that's pretty much where the similarity begins and ends.

Let's take their drawings of contraptions (I can't use the word "invention" here). Robinson's drawings were clean and delicate, while Goldberg's were raucous and energetic. Robinson would simply state what the contraption was supposed to do, and most of the delight came from tracing the way the thing would actually function. Goldberg would explain how each part of the system would work-- frequently relying on really lunatic speculations of causality. (One example required popping a balloon, which in turn could cause a shell-shocked WWI vet to keel over and land on a camera's squeezebulb.) In short, they both worked with the same core idea, but their styles and executions were very, very different.

It's sort of trite to chalk their differences up to their respective cultures-- you know, casting Robinson as the dignified, understated Brit, with echoes of Wodehouse's Jeeves, while Rube Goldberg represents the exuberance of early-20th-century American culture (a large part of which was due to recently-immigrant Jews of the time). But it'd be true. Robinson illustrated novels, and worked for stylish magazines: Goldberg worked as a newspaper cartoonist, cranking out weekly strips like "Boob McNutt."

That's 275. The large spring adds to the force of the fling. The small one holds the jaw open and in tension, although I don't know precisely why that's desirable (as opposed to having the jaws fixed in place at any given position). Perhaps that, too adds to the force of the fling.

It made for a series of good puzzle games - 'The Incredible Machine' and it's sequel 'Contraptions' which I am playing now.

- Gerry Quinn

Hehe, I like those answers. Website needs a section for "Answers" and a section for "Better Answers." (: