UK equivalent to Rube Goldberg?

[terry]

Must be dimming memory???????????? But can anybody help out please.

Was/is Rube Goldberg (that's in the USA, so called, version of English!) the equivalent of the original UK Heath Robinson?

Also vaguely remember some improbable machines by Emmett? In the immediate post WWII years. Including one at the Festival of Britain (When was that; 1953?) same year as the coronation of Elizabeth II?

Also various other terms/descriptions for ingenious ways of fixing (usually temporarily) and/or keeping something mechanically moving or operating. e.g. "String and baling wire", 'On a wing and prayer", or in earlier times "A ha'porth of tar an a couple of rope lashings".

While apologising for being OT it is, sort of, related to 'Do It Yourself', is it not?

Or, as here in Canada, we would utter a short interrogatory "Eh?". Note the question mark! Meaning "Do you not agree"!

Anyway still learning from this and other useful forums about how to repair one's household surroundings.

[Steve Firth]

Yes, Americans seem to think that Goldberg was the original but all he seemed to do was to copy Heath Robinson. WHR died in 1944, and Goldberg's cartoons pf bizarre machines didn't seem to appear until the late 1940s.

Rowland Emmett, some of his work still survives - there's a water clock that he built in a shopping centre in Nottingham. He was also a cartoonist but differed from Heath Robinson by building his machines.

[Colin Wilson]

The only references i've ever heard relating to Rube Goldberg were for bizarre chain-of-events scenarios in Half Life, using Garys Mod

[SJP]

[Alang]

Wikepedia has a good enough reference to both of them.

was quite an argument from some merkins on a thread last year claiming Heath Robinson was a Goldberg plagiarist.

[Bruce]

'Twas in 1951. Frederick Roland Emett was your man. His name has often been misspelt - he became so used to it that he allowed several different spellings to be used and never complained. He drew cartoons of improbable machines for "Punch" magazine but went much further and actually built many of them.

At the Festival of Britain there was an typically improbable but fully operational miniature railway designed by Emett, called the "Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Branch Railway".

There is a small picture of it in action here:

some pictures of Emett's designs and how they turned out here: his most widely known achievement was in the form of the improbable machines he designed for the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" that was released in 1968.

Emett was highly regarded in Canada and possibly the best tribute to his life is given by the Ontario Science Centre, where his devices are regularly exhibited. There's an Emett exhibition on next month:

a visit, eh? ;-)

[The Medway Handyman]

I always liked the WD40 & Duck Tape story.

[Steve Firth]

Including by you.