Word: goldbergian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...inventions," which fall somewhere between Rube Goldbergian complexity and a shaggy dog story. (Example: a slot machine "which blows off steam, lights up, whistles, makes five minutes of loud silence when you put a dime in it, eventually returns your coin-it's for giving yourself a tip in a self-service restaurant...
...testing," Audience Research will use the Hopkins Televote Machine, a Rube Goldbergian contrivance originally designed to chart audience reaction to movies (TIME, July 22, 1946). By turning a rheostat, hand-picked audiences indicate their degree of amusement from "very dull" to "like very much." Promising movies have a high "Want-to-See." Radio shows will get a "Want-to-Hear" rating...
...real goo (flown in from North Africa) turned out to be different from the Army's original description, and more hard-to-get materials had to be commandeered. The goo was so unusual and heavy that Standard's grease equipment had to be jacked up with Rube Goldbergian extra belts, pulleys and paddles. But by the following Sunday the order was done, four hours before the promised delivery time. By that time the plant was half-wrecked, as equipment collapsed under the strain. Then the Army asked for another 200,000 Ib. by the following weekend. At that...
Even at present high prices, and despite rationing, food shortages mounted. The Department of Agriculture started taking Canadian grain to meet a new, dangerous shortage-feed for cattle. Meanwhile Congress mouthed over a Rube Goldbergian tax bill engendered mainly by the Administration's failure to advance a courageous tax program in the first place...
This Rube-Goldbergian contraption is a product of the National Defense Research Committee, which includes the best scientific brains in the country. Powered by a 95-h.p. engine, the siren shoots a blast of air through spinning blades, creating sufficient racket to alarm a good-sized town. Tried in Manhattan, it whined over the downtown district, was reflected back over Brooklyn from Manhattan's tall buildings...