Rube Goldberg

An unlikely and absurdly designed machine intended to perform a simple function in the most complicated and indirect way. Named in honor of Reuben Lucius Goldberg (1883-1970), an engineer with the City of San Francisco Water and Sewers Department who became a Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor and author. His long-running comic strip, "Inventions", displayed many such devices of his own design.