Rube Goldberg

Rube Goldberg published nearly 50,000 cartoons. He began his career as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle under the leadership of William Randolph Hearst, and eventually moved to New York to work for such publications as the Evening Mail. Goldberg’s specialty was the creation of imaginary machines that posited elaborate mechanizations for simple tasks. While in one sense celebratory of modern technology, such inventions also function as metaphors for the absurdities of bureaucracy and the baroque methods of government, or, as in this case, the illogical machinations of the world at war. Produced during the years of the Second World War, Goldberg imagines a new technique by which the GI stationed in the tropics could do his laundry.