Friday, October 3, 2008

Rube Goldberg Lives!

I was reviewing some TV spots for showing in class next week and came upon a couple that reminded me of San Francisco-born cartoonist, Rube Goldberg.

Goldberg was a graduate of SF's Lowell High School, earned a BS in engineering at UC Berkeley and, for a time, worked as an engineer for the City and County of San Francisco. But his interest in drawing comics led him to a job at the Chronicle as a Sports Cartoonist.

He moved to New York in 1907 and, while he won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1948, he best known for his "invention" cartoons, like this one: Rube Goldberg's Cure for Oversleeping

I'm certain that these two very watchable TV spots were inspired by Rube Goldberg.


Guinness Domino Effect


The Most Expensive Advertisement U Have Ever Seen

TV spots from MetaCafe.com

1 comment:

....J.Michael Robertson said...

Yah, happy memories of the morning newspaper and the Goldberg cartoons, which delighted me as a child. Why? Was it a lesson in the nature of causality or the implication about how easily things could go wrong if the process was complicated? Don't remember. Just remember the pleasure of thinking through the steps.