I wish I were a kid again, Rube Goldberg!

I was probably only 4 or 5 years old when I ran across my first Rube Goldberg cartoon. Yay! What fun it was to see the impossible and impractical contraptions that sprang from the genius of Rube Goldberg!

I suppose that I had been primed for the occasion - some of my favorite puzzles as a child were rebus word puzzles. I loved to sound out the words from the tiny pictures even before I was able to read! In a way the designs of Rube Goldberg echo those rebus puzzles, by taking something simple or elemental and adding unnecessary complexity to it, just for fun. While I know this sounds somewhat like the management style of a recent employer, sometimes it’s downright magical to add a touch of Rube Golberg.

I don’t know how I’ve missed the annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. It was only this year that I noticed a piece on the news about the winners of the competition. Congratulations to the Ferris State University team for their win! Their machine took 345 steps to accomplish squeezing the juice from an orange and pouring it into a glass. Cool. Really makes me wish that I were a kid again, able to join in that competition. What a great incentive to wrap your mind around the stuff of engineering at an early age!

I like the mirthfulness of the Rube Goldberg designs. I think that’s part of the appeal of the Rolling Ball Sculptures and the Ping Pong Ball machines. My life in corporate engineering never gave the opportunity to waste money or time on extravagant, overly complicated and unnecessary steps. So I think I’m gonna enjoy doing it now.

I hereby dedicate myself to adding a touch of Rube Goldberg to each and every design of Universal Mirth & Magic.

MirthMaker