SMASH, CRASH, TOPPLE, ROLL!

Rube Goldberg’s comics inspired contemporary designs.

Goldberg (1883-1970) imagined how ordinary objects might do extraordinary things. He channeled his ideas into comics, and along the way, the name Rube Goldberg became an adjective: “doing something simple in a very complicated way that is not necessary.” Take Goldberg's comic "Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin”—a man takes a spoonful of soup, which triggers a catapult that eventually leads to a scythe cutting a string, allowing a napkin to wipe the man’s mouth. Thimmesh’s narrative encapsulates this over-the-top spirit. Her opening two spreads, hilariously illustrated by McCloskey, offer brilliantly convoluted suggestions for reading this book. A biographical section on Goldberg follows, along with several spreads examining the ways contemporary people have built three-dimensional Goldberg contraptions. Having connected the past to the present, Thimmesh makes a more important point: “Beneath the whimsy lies the science.” Six simple machines that come up in Goldberg’s comics—the lever, the wheel and axle, the inclined plane, the wedge, the screw, and the pulley—each get their own page of explanation and comic treatment. Guidance on building a Rube Goldberg machine is followed by amusing, thoughtful tips. Balancing humor, creativity, and science, Thimmesh has crafted a work Goldberg himself would approve of. McCloskey’s exuberant cartoon illustrations make the science easy to grasp; human characters vary in skin tone.

Funny, chock-full of science, and wonderfully complicated—like its subject matter.