Background
Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883, in San Francisco, California, the son of Max Goldberg, a German immigrant who was successful in real estate, banking, and local politics, and Hannah Cohen.
(off small boat tied to swimmer's big toe)
off small boat tied to swimmer's big toe
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Rube-Goldberg-Reuben-Lucius/dp/0130747998?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0130747998
( If Rube’s inventions are any indication, “normal” means...)
If Rube’s inventions are any indication, “normal” means something very different in the Goldberg household. For Rube, up is down, in is out, and the simplest path to accomplishing an everyday task—like brushing his teeth or getting dressed—is a humorously complicated one. Follow Rube as he sets out on a typical school day, overcomplicating each and every step from the time he wakes up in the morning until the time he goes to bed at night. This book features fourteen inventions, each depicting an interactive sequence whose purpose is to help Rube accomplish mundane daily tasks: a simple way to get ready for school, to make breakfast, to do his homework, and so much more.
https://www.amazon.com/Goldbergs-Simple-Normal-Humdrum-School/dp/1419725580?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1419725580
cartoonist engineer inventor sculptor author
Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883, in San Francisco, California, the son of Max Goldberg, a German immigrant who was successful in real estate, banking, and local politics, and Hannah Cohen.
Goldberg's interest in drawing was evident by the time he was four. At twelve he was taking art lessons from a sign painter. Following graduation from San Francisco's Lowell High School, he entered the University of California at Berkeley to major in engineering. He drew illustrations for the student paper, and as a reward for a prize cartoon in the class yearbook, he received a trip to Yosemite. He took his B. S. degree in 1904.
After graduation in 1904, Goldberg took a job with the city engineering department. For almost a year he shaped sewer lines and water mains, but the work did not appeal to him and he left his municipal post to try his hand at newspaper art. The consequence was a career as unique as the odd characters he developed on his drawing board. First came a brief period (1904-1905) as a sports cartoonist with the San Francisco Chronicle. For the San Francisco Bulletin (1906-1907) he visited prizefight training camps to make "action" sketches. In 1907, Goldberg was hired as a sports cartoonist and columnist for the New York Mail, where he remained for nineteen years. Thus began the highly successful Foolish Questions series. Goldberg knew that the wild drawings and texts that characterized the series had struck that human note which gets anything of this kind over, whether it is a drawing, a song, or a piece of writing. Countless readers submitted suggestions, and the series ultimately ran to the tens of thousands. The Foolish Questions series was followed by Phony Films, I'm Cured, and the incredibly complex Inventions, which resulted in Goldberg's name being used as an adjective. Goldberg's comic-strip creations include Mike and Ike - They Look Alike, Boob McNutt, The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Ladies' Club, and Lala Palooza. Perhaps his best known character was the inventor known as Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, whose origins can be traced back to Goldberg's student days in mine engineering and his first contacts with complicated machinery. An amiable session with the literary scholar William Lyon Phelps led to the creation of Lala Palooza. Boob McNutt was syndicated in scores of Sunday comic sections from 1915 to 1934. As his comic strips became increasingly popular, Goldberg's income grew commensurately. For more than a decade and a half Goldberg earned $150, 000 annually, and syndication of his work boosted his income to $1. 5 million a year. Then, in an abrupt career shift, the nationally popular comic artist joined the New York Sun as a political cartoonist in 1938. In their history of American political cartooning, The Ungentlemanly Art (1968), Stephen Hess and Milton Kaplan credit Goldberg with being "the only major figure ever to move completely from the comics to political cartooning. " Complicated as Goldberg's comic drawings had been, it was a simple editorial cartoon that brought him a Pulitzer Prize in 1948. Many other honors came to Goldberg during his long life. In 1942 his work was exhibited by the Citizens Committee for the Army and Navy. Goldberg died in New York City on December 7, 1970.
( If Rube’s inventions are any indication, “normal” means...)
(off small boat tied to swimmer's big toe)
Member of the National Cartoonists Society, member of the Artists and Writers Golf Association, member of the Society of Illustrators
Goldberg married Irma Seeman on October 17, 1916. They lived at 98 Central Park West in New York City and had two sons.
