DocAndersen
The ghostwriter asked us to post a strange picture and talk about it. I picked one of my favorite machines, a Rube Goldberg machine. Rube Goldberg created the contest where people were asked to create the most complex machine, with way too many steps to do a simple job. I love that concept and often have wondered if sometimes in the technology world, the Rube Goldberg approach isn’t the top one!
In the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Phaedrus, the hero, talked about his job as an Engineer at a Charcoal Grill factory. The engineering team would pick the most complex directions for assembling the grill as they sent them out to consumers.
Now as we look at the picture and dive a little into it we see an incredibly complex machine designed to help someone eat. I am reminded of the house of Doc Brown from the Back to the Future Movies.
Sometimes complex systems are at best overkill. Such machines are called Rube Goldberg Devices!
Love the drawing and looks like a really complicated machine, It reminds me of one of those chug chug machines you sometimes see in cartoons
yes I think Rube Goldberg got inspiration from those!
This machine really looks very complicated. I prefer simple machines ?
yes, the goal is to make some way more complicated than it needs to be to function.!
It really looks like a very complicated machine but if it works, success is complete
the goal is to do something way harder than it needs to be done! they are fun to watch!
I had not understood the meaning of this challenge, but now it is better understood for me. Thanks Doc.
it is a fun way to get wild pictures out on the site. I went techy of course!
Now, this is interesting. I wonder if we had complex electronic devices that followed many steps to do a simple task. Many of us would have become insane.
The original tabulators (pre-cursor to the computer) were hard to operate. They cut the time for computation, so people used them@
My apologies, this picture comes from Google Images.
This was spectacular. I learned new things. I love the picture and I appreciate your teaching skills.
thanks – fun idea to brighten things up a bit