Talk:Rube Goldberg machine

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Maybe this article should say what the Rube Goldberg machine was meant to do, wheather or not it did it and how it did it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.191.136.3 (talk) 16:53, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Contents 1 Naming 2 Too many pop culture references 3 Influence of Patents 4 Reversion 5 This page needs shortening 6 Music 7 "Expanded" meaning

[edit] Naming

The name of the Rube Goldberg Machine is a Rube Goldberg Machine itself! (as well as all the other names in the world) They are lengthy and overly-complicated names for a simple concept. Maybe "mouse trap" would be better, based on the children's game that exploits this concept as well as the old saying, "...build a better mouse trap". Or even RGM. Mingramh (talk) 18:54, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I've always heard of one of these as being called a Rube Goldberg Device as opposed to Machine. Googling "Rube Goldberg Device" reveals numerous hits. I don't have a dog in the fight, much less one attached to a pulley mechanism, but you might want to acknowledge this. IvyGold (talk) 23:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Too many pop culture references

There were far too many examples of these devices in pop culture, and not enough about the expression or its place in society. I beefed up the latter, and substantially cut down the former; examples are useful to illustrate, but the page lost sight of the topic. Major Bloodnok 14:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Since the very concept originates from cartoons, I think popculture references are quite appropriate. At the very least, I think the deleted reference to The Incredible Machine games should be put back, since they are the most notable of all "Rube Goldberg machine" games. I would replace the obscure "Half-Life 2 mod" reference with TIM. (Note that the Garry's Mod article only briefly mentions this concept.) Muad 14:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Pop culture refs are appropriate, I agree, but there were far too many of them, and the page had degenerated into a list of seemingly every occasion where a fantastical machine has occured. I felt that one could get a better understanding of the topic with fewer examples. As to Garry's mod, it may be a less appropriate example than the Incredible Machine, but I must admit not to knowing anything about the latter. By all means change the text if you feel it would benefit. Major Bloodnok 21:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

To me it seems like the reason this page was created in the first place was to group all the Rube Goldberg machines on Wikipedia together, allowing navigating from one to the other by means of this page.--190.39.171.201 23:20, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

It is also absurd to suggest that Professor Branestawm has "Rube Goldberg machines", when in fact they are Heath Robinson devices - which predate Goldberg by about 20 years. Why, Branestawm is even illustrated by Heath Robinson himself! I am going to delete that item at once. 86.141.75.237 19:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Just going to chime in here and add that the pop culture list is ridiculous. I don't know the WP rules like some people but there's no way this incredibly pointless and off-topic list meets them. A "reference" to a Rube Goldberg machine would be when some pop culture item actually makes obvious that the machine in question was influenced by Rube. Just because there are complicated plots in a cartoon show doesn't somehow qualify it as reference. If there are no objections, I've made a mental note to clean that list out sometime soon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dynamic1 (talk • contribs) 01:36, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Influence of Patents

Viewing the sample Rube Goldberg cartoons shown in the reference [1] I'm reminded of the content of United States patents. The ink-on-board drawing style and textual descriptions mirror the style formalized by the U.S. Patent Office. View the actual patent linked here [2] for obvious similarities.

The similarity could be accidental or intentional. According to the biography at [3] Rube took training as an engineer and called his drawings, "Inventions." Are there any quotes or commentaries that explore this connection, or indicate that it is intentional?

Dclo 18:33, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Didn't many of Max Fliescher's cartoons from the 1920s contain simillar complicated machines?

[edit] Reversion

Someone blanked the page. I couldn't see any valid reason why, so I've reverted the page and added the above unsigned comment.

There are far _too_ many Pop Culture refs. As per a previous comment, these are appropriate to this concept, but too many reduces the impact of the page. Can I suggest a separate page - perhaps a list of pop culture refs connected with RGM? On the other hand, given that RGM is such a loose concept, the potential list is endless. What does the community think?Major Bloodnok 18:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This page needs shortening

Still too many Pop Culture references. This page falls foul of [WP:TRIV] in that the list is disorganised and unfocused. Wikipedia is not a place for such a list, accepting that the concept of the Rube Goldberg machine is rooted in pop culture. There is a good argument for having a small number of examples of RGMs in the wider world, but this page is not the place for a comprehensive "laundry list". I'll have a go at it when I get a chance. Major Bloodnok 08:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Music

Whenever a Rube Goldberg device is used by name or as a breakfast machine (which seems to be the popular use) in a movie or television show, it is accompanied by the same piece of music. Could someone identify it? It was used in the mythbusters episode.

Perhaps the Goldberg Variations by J. S. Bach. I can't confirm this, I haven't seen the mythbusters episode. The same reference might be on the X Files episode menctioned earlier on the article. Ggenellina (talk) 05:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Expanded" meaning

The lead paragraph concludes:

Since then, the expression's meaning has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system. For example, recent news headlines include "Is Rep. Bill Thomas the Rube Goldberg of Legislative Reform?", and "Retirement 'insurance' as a Rube Goldberg machine". It has been argued that fissioning uranium to boil water under tremendous temperature and pressure renders nuclear power a Rube Goldberg machine.

Now the first sentence may be true. However, the subsequent references are actual uses of the phrase -- and all of them are examples of the phrase being used as a rhetorical epithet. The first is digging into a politician, the second into a specific policy, and the third is some kind of weird rant against nuclear power. Putting this all together, I get the impression the above is an example of original research, since it seems to be attempting to prove the claim made in the first sentence, not demonstrate it via citation to an external argument. I feel it needs to be edited accordingly, but perhaps I'm just strange! mdf (talk) 23:44, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree with mdf. The examples provided are all cases of the term being used pejoratively, and intentionally or not seem to show a negative POV towards Bill Thomas, retirement insurance, and nuclear power. Also, sources 2 and 4 are from blogs, which may strain self published sources. I find myself asking, given that the term is generally used negatively, if it is possible to reference this expanded meaning without inherently criticizing the subject of any examples. The definition in the same paragraph, "accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply" is broad enough to cover organizations and systems, not just machines. Is a section on this meaning and examples necessary? Scj2315 (talk) 09:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I must admit to having re-written the lead a while ago. Someone else has added the Nuclear power reference. I put in the first two examples of usage in an attempt to demonstrate how the term is used, and I felt that the examples backed up the statement in the first sentence. I didn't think this was original research, but maybe it does fall foul of that (I don't have any good reference works which could be cited instead). I think an explanation of RGD in language is valid, but maybe there are better ways of putting it. From what searching around I have done, it seemed that the whole concept of a RGD has gone beyond its original meaning, to encompass (as Scj2315 put it), "organisations and systems, not just machines". I think that this idea does need mentioning, but I'm not sure that it is important enough to warrant a page to itself. Using a pop culture reference as an easily understood metaphor is interesting, but RGD is only one US-based expression among many international ones.

I'm currently thinking that any discussion of RGD as a grammatical expression should be limited to the Rube Goldberg page, and this page deleted; it has become a pointless list of pop culture references. Maybe within the grammar section of WP there is an area for discussion of this kind of epithet. I don't really think this page has much point. What does the community think? Major Bloodnok (talk) 10:38, 27 April 2008 (UTC)