RUBE GOLDBERG 1923 DAILY STRIP ORIGINAL ART FEATURING EARLY RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE.
Item Description
While many are familiar w/Rube Goldberg Machines, many are unaware of the man who created them and were in fact, named after - cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883-1970). Goldberg's complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways have immortalized the artist. The character most closely associated w/Rube Goldberg Machines is Goldberg's Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, A.K., who was credited as the inventor of these outlandish devices. Professor Butts first appeared in a prose piece published Nov. 3, 1928 in Collier's story It's The Little Things That Matter. But the Rube Goldberg Machine pre-dates the good Professor, as seen in Goldberg's pen and ink original art for a Feb. 19, 1922 daily strip offered here. Approx. 6.5x20.25" artboard features three panels, first featuring text explaining the ten step Rube Goldberg Machine that presents a "Simple Way To Heat Baby's Bottle Early In The Morning" as noted in Goldberg's handwritten script below art. Steps include caterpillar turning into butterfly and pulling string that lifts cover off mirror, showing monkey how ugly he is, which gets him "Hot Under The Collar," lighting candle which burns until it falls into pot of gasoline, over which baby's bottle is hung off back of sleeping parents' bed. Goldberg has signed at bottom left corner of panel, beside McNaught Syndicate, Inc. copyright strip. Third panel features Steve Himself companion gag panel, which has been sectioned into four smaller panels, showing man admiring attractive woman, but decided to let someone else approach her first lest he anger her husband, should she have one nearby. Steve Himself is the first to approach, as the woman's angry husband appears behind him. Artboard has inked date partially crossed out at bottom right w/correction written above it. Pin holes at left/right margins w/single pin hole in second panel (by head of parents' bed) and another pin hole in Steve Himself first mini panel. Bottom margin has uneven edge w/some chipping, but this does not affect art in any way. Artboard shows obvious wear, w/right side having large area of moisture staining, affecting majority of last panel and top/bottom right corners of main panel. VG. Pre-1950 examples of original art featuring Rube Goldberg Machines rarely come to market, let alone a piece that pre-dates the gag's "official" introduction in The Inventions of Professor Lucifer G. Butts, A.K.
