Rube Goldberg machine designers participating in a competition in New Mexico Other films such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, End Credits of Waiting…, Diving into the Money Pit, and Back to the Future have featured Rube Goldberg–style devices as well. Wallace from Wallace and Gromit creates and uses many such machines for numerous tasks, though the inspiration is the British cartoonist W.
Worrell uses his invention simply to turn his TV on. Many of Goldberg's ideas were utilized in films and TV shows for the comedic effect of creating such rigmarole for such a simple task, such as the front gate mechanism in The Goonies and the breakfast machine shown in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Because Rube Goldberg machines are contraptions derived from tinkering with the tools close to hand, parallels have been drawn with evolutionary processes. The term "Rube Goldberg" was being used in print to describe elaborate contraptions by 1928, and appeared in the Random House Dictionary of the English Language in 1966 meaning "having a fantastically complicated improvised appearance", or "deviously complex and impractical". The cartoon above is Goldberg's Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin, which was later reprinted in a few book collections, including the postcard book Rube Goldberg's Inventions! and the hardcover Rube Goldberg: Inventions, both compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. The expression is named after the American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, whose cartoons often depicted devices that performed simple tasks in indirect convoluted ways. Patent Office (and its policy regarding perpetual motion machines), and the power efficiency of gasoline Something for Nothing (1940), a short film featuring Goldberg illustrating the U.S. Half a century after his death, even scientific hypotheses deemed to be overly complex have been described by referencing such machines, as with linking solar gamma-ray signals to dark matter seeming "to be like a Rube Goldberg-type thing” Bill Thomas the Rube Goldberg of Legislative Reform?" and "Retirement 'insurance' as a Rube Goldberg machine". News headlines include, but are not limited to, "Is Rep. Over the years, the expression has expanded to mean any confusing or overly complicated system. Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and ignites lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K), which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M), allowing pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.
Toucan jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past toucan (E).
Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931).