So, to those of us too young to know or remember, there was an american cartoonist by the name of Rube Goldburg, he was famous for making machine moving through complicated scenarios and being way to intricate to do a simple task.
an example of this would be the breakfast machine from pee wee's big adventure.

His most famous he himself came up with was the self wiping napkin
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_xJWa77A8OS...rubeinvent.jpg

You can see others of his creations here


An Engineer's Aspect: 29 Rube Goldberg Machines on October 29th

Now for other opinions on extremely overly complex machines? Most people I have met have actually compared cars nowadays to these machines.

 

Hi `Dustin,

Very Interesting...I do learn something new every time I visit the MCF...Thanks for sharing & also creating some activity for our forum...
Very Interesting, I will have to comtemplate his deSigns

Hav'in my spaceFuel as I think about `it