In the early 1900s, people were busy creating new machines to help make life easier and get things done faster. The US Patent Office was flooded every year with new inventions for absolutely everything Rube Goldberg saw the humor and dangers in the new inventions that were changing the lives of ordinary people. And so, for over fifty years, he drew cartoons that made fun of the new machines He drew "inventions that used simple everyday items buckets, cups, balls, sticks, etc.-connected to each other in funny ways to get the simplest task. done in many complicated steps. Rube Goldberg took the simplest task and, using the most low-tech technology, made it the most complicated task with high-tech design. His inventions became so famous that his name has been included as a noun in Webster's. Dictionary