For those of you who don’t know Rube Goldberg was the illustrator who made the comics that featured a wild complicated contraption to do a rather simple task. For instance you’d let a dog out of a cage who would scare a cat, who would in turn arch hi back and flip a see-saw type thing that would flip a switch on a fan which would blow a toy sailboat across a little tub…all ending in something flicking the switch on the televsion. Well anyway, once on PBS, I saw a half-hour documentary that featured a RG contraption made by some University student engineers. The contraption took about a half-hour long from beginning to end. It was truly amazing. I’d love to get my hands on this doc if anyone remembers it or anything about it. Thanks.
There is an anuual competition for american engineering students called the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. Visit that link for in-depth information, including rules, history, and the results of past competitions.
There is an Australian program called “Beyond 2000” which featured students building one of these machines. The program used to air regularly in the US - and they often featured American Sci-Tech. I vaguely remember viewing it. I believe they followed students at Purdue University. I don’t have any more information than that. If it helps, I sent off an email to the Argonne Lab and Beyond2000 producers to see if they could assist.