四、閱讀測驗
Reuben Garret Lucius Goldberg was born on July 4th 1883 in San Francisco. By the end of his lifetime in
December 7th 1970, he was known as an inventor, sculptor, author, engineer and cartoonist. At a young age, he
loved drawing, tracing and being creative, but this was discouraged by his parents. In 1904, he graduated with a
degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He was then hired as an engineer by the city
of San Francisco but eventually quit to become a sports cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1907 he
moved to New York where he worked for several newspapers. He soon became famous as an artist.
His cartoon strips were popular, but the work that gave him unforgettable lifelong fame was the character
he created—Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. Using the character, he would illustrate inventions that later
became known as the “Rube Goldberg Machine”. A “Rube Goldberg Machine” is an extremely complicated
device that performs a very simple task in a complex, indirect way. This is now used as an expression to describe
any system that's confusing or complicated and came from Goldbergʼs illustrations of ridiculous machines. The
first illustration showing a “Rube Goldberg Machine” was an Automatic Weight Reducing Machine in 1914
using components such as a donut, bomb, wax, balloon and hot stove to trap an overweight person in a sound
and food proof prison. The overweight person had to lose weight before freeing himself. He used many simple
subjects and made them humorous yet very complicated. This included scratching insect bites, scrubbing your
back in a bath, opening a window, collecting mail and finding a ball.
Throughout his career, Goldberg was fascinated by the advancement of technology and thought it
humorous that people either embraced the benefits technology brought or were unwilling to accept new
technology as it seemingly increased dependency and laziness. He personally believed people preferred
choosing a more difficult route instead of completing a goal simply and directly. As he said, “the machines are a
symbol of manʼs capacity for making maximum effort to achieve minimal results”. His inventions were
interesting because he did the complete opposite of what most machines do—instead of making difficult things
easy, he made easy things difficult. 【題組】25. Why did Reuben Goldberg draw the interesting machines?
(A) To express his distrust of modern technology.
(B) To make fun of a certain professor in his university.
(C) To show how men often made simple things more complicated.
(D) To mirror his childhood life as an overweight boy.
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