About Rube Goldberg: Reuben Garrett Lucius "Rube" Goldberg was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor.
I didn't have any real art training, but when I was about twelve nad thirteen, another boy and I went to a sign painter's house every Friday night and took lessons.
Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings...
And during my college, at the end of the junior year I worked in a mine.
I, I don't think anybody's continually happy, uh, except idiots, you know. You know, you have to have little moments of depression.
Naturally, I'm conservative; I'm a Republican. I always was.
Yeah, yeah. I, I don't think I'm always right. But I don't think young people are always right, either.
And, uh, I did that, and there was nothing more ridiculous to me than finding the weight of the earth because I didn't care how much the earth weighed.
And, uh, I've got about six thousand cartoons up there, also books and papers.
I didn't write because in the corps I took mining engineering of all things and, you know, they, they graduate a mining engineer as a sort of an illiterate.
It just happened that the public happened to, uh, appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.
Uh, I just had an operation last March which was rather serious and I'm recuperating now. I'm on a very bland diet. But, uh, I'm lucky, I was just lucky, that's all.
When I did sports cartoons, I used to uh, go to fights.
And I, uh, I wonder how anybody can think his personality changes with his success. I've had quite a bit of success but I feel that I'm just the same person as I always was.
And uh, I'm glad that I still have my hands and my eyes to work with.
