Rube Goldberg
unnecessarily complicated
TRANSLATION
Rube Goldberg = unnötig kompliziert, umständlicher/unpraktischer Plan oder Gebrauchsgegenstand --- GOOGLE INDEX Rube Goldberg: approximately 630,000 Google hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
It’s the maddening inefficiency of our current RUBE GOLDBERG system of healthcare financing that makes it so expensive…
(Dickinson Press)
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Greg Valliere, managing director of Schwab Washington Research Group, calls the Senate deal a RUBE GOLDBERG approach…
(Investor's Business Daily)
(Dickinson Press)
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Greg Valliere, managing director of Schwab Washington Research Group, calls the Senate deal a RUBE GOLDBERG approach…
(Investor's Business Daily)
Did you
know?
Rube Goldberg
adjective phrase (slang)
- accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply
(Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary 2009)
noun
- a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation
(Webster's New World Dictionary)
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WORD ORIGIN
Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco, on the 4th of July 1883. After graduating University of California Berkeley with a degree in engineering, he went on to work as an engineer for the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.
Rube, an avid cartoonist, decided after six months, engineering was not his calling. Instead, he became an office boy in the sports department of a San Francisco newspaper. In this capacity, he began to submit drawings and cartoons to the editor. He eventually moved to New York and continued to draw cartoons.
The cartoons that made him famous involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In that series, Goldberg invented and drew funny and complicated machines for simple tasks. Thus a Rube Goldberg became synonymous with things that are overly complicated.
An example of one of Goldberg's machines was the "self-operating napkin," which functioned as follows:
When a soupspoon is raised to the mouth, it pulls a string that jerks a ladle, which throws a cracker past a parrot. The parrot jumps after the cracker and his perch tilts, spilling seeds into a bucket .The extra weight in the bucket pulls a cord, opening and lighting an automatic cigar lighter. This sets off a skyrocket and causes a sickle to cut a string, thereby allowing a pendulum with an attached napkin to swing back and forth to wipe the chin. After-dinner entertainment can be supplied with the simple substitution of a harmonica for the napkin.
(sources: rubegoldberg.com, Wikipedia)
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SMUGGLE OWAD INTO TODAY'S CONVERSATION:
"That sounds like a Rube Goldberg solution, there must be a simpler way!"
adjective phrase (slang)
- accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply
(Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary 2009)
noun
- a comically involved, complicated invention, laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation
(Webster's New World Dictionary)
---
WORD ORIGIN
Reuben Lucius Goldberg (Rube Goldberg) was born in San Francisco, on the 4th of July 1883. After graduating University of California Berkeley with a degree in engineering, he went on to work as an engineer for the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.
Rube, an avid cartoonist, decided after six months, engineering was not his calling. Instead, he became an office boy in the sports department of a San Francisco newspaper. In this capacity, he began to submit drawings and cartoons to the editor. He eventually moved to New York and continued to draw cartoons.
The cartoons that made him famous involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In that series, Goldberg invented and drew funny and complicated machines for simple tasks. Thus a Rube Goldberg became synonymous with things that are overly complicated.
An example of one of Goldberg's machines was the "self-operating napkin," which functioned as follows:
When a soupspoon is raised to the mouth, it pulls a string that jerks a ladle, which throws a cracker past a parrot. The parrot jumps after the cracker and his perch tilts, spilling seeds into a bucket .The extra weight in the bucket pulls a cord, opening and lighting an automatic cigar lighter. This sets off a skyrocket and causes a sickle to cut a string, thereby allowing a pendulum with an attached napkin to swing back and forth to wipe the chin. After-dinner entertainment can be supplied with the simple substitution of a harmonica for the napkin.
(sources: rubegoldberg.com, Wikipedia)
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SMUGGLE OWAD INTO TODAY'S CONVERSATION:
"That sounds like a Rube Goldberg solution, there must be a simpler way!"
