Sunday 12 October 2008

Rube Goldberg's pencil sharpener

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Rube Goldberg: The simplified pencil-sharpener. (1930s)

Open window (A) and fly kite (B). String (C) lifts small door (D) allowing moths (E) to escape and eat red flannel shirt (F). As weight of shirt becomes less, shoe (G) steps on switch (H) which heats electric iron (I) and burns hole in pants (J). Smoke (K) enters hole in tree (L), smoking out opossum (M) which jumps into basket (N), pulling rope (O) and lifting cage (P), allowing woodpecker (Q) to chew wood from pencil (R), exposing lead. Emergency knife (S) is always handy in case opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can't work.
Wonderful invention there from Rube Goldberg or as they* call it a A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately overengineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in a very indirect and convoluted fashion. Goldberg's drawings, for example, almost always included a live animal which was expected to perform part of the sequence of tasks.
*They, being Wikipedia.

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