Scott Berkun

The pointless technology competition

Rube Goldberg was an engineering student who quickly realized he preferred making fun of engineers more than engineering things himself. His legendary cartoons of bizarre, over-engineered devices for trivial tasks have lived on well past his own lifetime.

So what do we make of people who actually try to make Rube Goldberg machines? Are they simply creative enthusiasts with a sense of humor or are they entirely missing Goldberg’s point? You decide.

This year, at one of four Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, a team from Purdue won with a 156 step machine for making hamburgers.

Video highlights of the event on gizmodo.

And you can see photos of the winning machines from the last few years on the Purdue website.

• Posted Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am


• in Innovation, Teaching/Training, creative thinking | Comment on this » |