Inventions

Rube Goldberg was born in 1883 and over the next 87 years became an inventor, sculptor, author, engineer, and is most well-known for his work as a cartoonist. One of his most favorite cartoon characters was Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, who was usually drawn demonstrating his latest "invention" that would achieve a simple task through the use of very complicated machinery.

These machines, in fact, became known eponymously as "Rube Goldbergs"; a comic, complicated invention laboriously contrived to perform a simple operation.

There is even a website dedicated not only to his memory, but to hosting an annual "Rube Goldberg Contest" for high school and college engineering teams. Last week Purdue University won again for creating a machine that takes 156 steps to assemble a hamburger.

And you thought I was kidding.

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ON INVENTIONS AND INVENTING...

"An inventor is a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization." (Ambrose PIerce)

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." (Thomas Alva Edison)

"Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need." (Charles F. Kettering)

"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people." (Karl Marx)

"Name the greatest of all inventors: By Accident." (Mark Twain)

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." (Dave Barry)

"Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought." (Albert Gyorgyi)

"The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." (Plato)

"Necessity is the mother of invention, it is true, but its father is creativity, and knowledge is the midwife." (Jonathan Schattke)

[selected from several websites around the 'Net]

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WISDOM for YOUR WEEK: "Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed." (Proverbs 16:3)

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