Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg was a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist best known for his whimsical inventions that accomplished simple tasks in the most elaborate ways possible. Born in San Francisco in 1883 to German-Jewish immigrants, Goldberg was always a creative child, but he studied engineering instead of art at UC Berkeley in order to appease his parents. Only a year after he graduated, however, he went back to drawing, becoming a renowned cartoonist inside of a decade.
His signature style of absurd, chain-reaction machines, termed “Rube Goldberg Machines” captured the imagination of readers during the early 20th century, and his Boob McNutt and “I’m the Guy” series earned him additional fame. However, behind the humor, Goldberg was a talented anti-fascist political cartoonist, raising the standards for his craft and earning a Pulitzer Prize.
Today, Goldberg’s legacy lives on in art and engineering competitions, pop culture references, and creative classrooms around the world, where his work continues to make people laugh and think in equal measure.
Important Moments
Highlights from the Collection
A cloth doll of Rube Goldberg's iconic "Boob McNutt" character.
Rube Goldberg's work featured in Pathe Magazine
An ad for Smith-Corona typewriters, featuring one of "Professor Lucifer Butts'" machines, created by Rube Goldberg.
Rube Goldberg on the cover of Pathé in the nineteen-teens. Pathé was a silent film company that also produced publications around the film and entertainment industry.
Most of Goldberg’s legacy is defined by his humor — most prevalently the complex machines he designed to do such simple tasks as brushing teeth or taking photos. Those machines were featured in a Sunday Funnies comic strip that ran from 1914 to 1964, in which Professor Lucifer Butts presents and explains his inventions.
You’ve heard the formula: He’s the guy who put the [blank] in [blank]. Well, Goldberg capitalized on that formula, with punny variations that he published in comic strips and put on merch like these cigarette carton buttons. Not pictured: “I’m the guy that put the con in Congress.”
A tin toy version of Rube Goldberg's cartoon strip character "Boob McNutt." This toy cost $12.75 per dozen in the 1920s (see newspaper ad, also illustrated in this collection).).
Rube Goldberg appears in a 2015 board game called “Steampunk Rally,” as one of history’s greatest inventors.
The "Foolish Questions" card game provides “A million dollars worth of laughs for thirty-five cents,” as the game insert pictured here puts it.
