Have you ever brushed your teeth with a cuckoo clock? Licked a stamp by chopping onions? Flipped a page using marble, stove and hamster power?
A man called Joseph Herscher has done it all. Now famed as a builder of Rube Goldberg machines (devices that do simple tasks in ridiculously roundabout ways) Joseph has attracted nearly 40,000 subscribers and millions of views with his Youtube antics. And he’s not the only one this cuckoo.
Beginning in 1914 with the whimsical newspaper drawings of cartoonist Rube Goldberg, the loopy trend has taken flight,
Possibly inspiring elaborate booby traps from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and every other treasure hunting film,
and the brand of uniquely useless inventions associated with Wallace and Gromit.
The more pointless and unnecessary, the more funny the machine – hence the Petit-Tomatan robot that sits on your shoulders and feeds you tomatoes as you run,
or this ingenious set up that slows a golf stroke to the pace of a tortoise and the growing speed of grass.
Even songs can benefit from the RG treatment – this machine was synchronised to the soundtrack’s rhythm, and outfitted with flags, paint guns and other visual flair to become a music video watched over 53 million times.
However the most epic Rube Goldberg must be this ambitious warehouse run. The cascade starts out small and standard – apart from the gun and axes – but quickly escalates to a whole new scale, as man becomes marble, running freely up and down ramps, catapulting into the air, and racing a titanic chain reaction.
From something as simple as witty cartoon doodles, the Rube Goldberg has experienced its own runaway reaction, finding its niche in film, technology and the internet where it reminds us are there are many ways to get the job done – if we don’t mind taking (a lot of) time and having fun along the way.
Feature image belongs to Jordanhill School D&T Dept
By Vincent Tan
