Heath Robinson Contraptions

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To celebrate his work and influence, the William Heath Robinson Trust is raising funds to develop a London museum dedicated to the illustrator.

That his drawings are beautifully rendered and his contraptions set against fine landscapes or townscapes is an essential part of the joke. His gadgetry -- despite how daft it was and because of how daft it was -- really embodied the crazy, but innovative culture of Great Britain.In his introduction to The Art of Rube Goldberg by Rube's granddaughter Jennifer George, Adam Gopnik argues that Goldberg is the more credible of the two. Even though Robinson’s magazine career took him through both World Wars, harmlessness seems to be the theme that runs through his work. With illustrations salvaged from the family archives and commentary by Heath Robinson expert, Geoffrey Beare, Contraptions is the best possible introduction to the work of one of Britain's great comic talents. German breaches of the Hague Convention – Huns using siphons of laughing gas to overcome our troops before an attack in close formation’ (1915), W. He died in 1944, well before GCHQ declassified the work that took place at Bletchley Park, so Robinson wouldn't have been aware of his computational namesake.

It’s no battle scene, though, as the Americans are literally picking up the peak on which the Germans are encamped and using a combination of tractor, aircraft and a horse to pull it away, while a man on a bicycle follows poking the hill onwards. The Wallace-Gromit household borrows heavily from a full-scale model of a contraption-filled house entitled "The Gadget Family", designed and built for the Ideal Home Show in 1934 -- there are even trapdoors delivering the family to the breakfast table. I know a lot of his contraptions are superfluous and complicated, but they embody the English madness and invention. Lim is interested in how Robinson required a person to be part of the mechanism to work, focusing on human behaviour as much as the rise of the machine. If Elon Musk does ever has a museum dedicated to him it will be somewhere much showier, but Robinson’s life and work seem well suited to the pleasant park of which his museum now occupies a corner next to a duck pond.One of his most famous series of illustrations was that which accompanied the first Professor Branestawm book written by Norman Hunter. He led people into questioning the war effort but at the same time his creations -- depicting 'Weapons of Moronic Distinction' -- were useful in helping morale," says Endeacott. A favourite theme for Heath Robinson’s humorous drawings is chance, unlikely events and the workings of fate.