Predictions for the Year 2070 A.D.
date: label: Date made
content: 1970
name: label: original artist
content: Goldberg, Rube
label: original artist
content: Goldberg, Rube
notes: label: Description
content: Watercolor drawing by Rube Goldberg for the single cell cartoon <I>Predictions for the Year 2070 A.D.,</I> 1970.
label: Description
content: Considered to be Rube's last cartoon, this watercolor drawing looks humorously at problems with politics, women's liberation, scientific invention and the generation gap, and the potential for those issues to continue for at least one hundred years.
label: Description
content: Rube Goldberg (1883-1970) was best known for the invention comic art series <I>The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts</I> that he created for local and national newspapers between 1914 and the 1964. In a career that spanned more than half a century, he created some 50,000 individual and series cartoons. His subjects included American politics, sports, and everyday, timeless concerns. As he said in 1940, "Humor comes from everyday situations, because nothing is as funny as real life."
label: Description
content: His best-remembered invention comic series looks at everyday life and our love-hate relationship with technology. The series reminds us of the disquieting feelings we have when using new mechanical devices that offer progress while taking away the comfort of an acquired skill or an older way of performing a task. The automobile, the airplane, the telephone, and the radio, among other conveniences, had not been invented when Rube Goldberg was born in 1883. They were world-wide and life-changing innovations by the 1920s, to which everyone was becoming accustomed. The inventions promised hours of entertainment and freedom, but at the same time created fear and feelings of loss of human importance.
label: Description
content: Along with the more common fear that the new technologies would take the place of manual labor and human intelligence, Rube Goldberg also came to believe that individualism was disappearing. The more we gave in to the use of innovations and commodities, he felt, the less room there was for our individual perceptions, concerns, and activities. In 1921, for example, he declared that the telephone had "superseded the dog as man's best friend."
label: Description
content: Another of Rube Goldberg's continuing themes touched on the humor of man's situation, even to his last cartoons; that nothing really changes no matter how persistent we are, and that man has a "capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimum results."
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, New York City
topic: label: Subject
content: Comics
label: Subject
content: Comics
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content: Work and Industry: Graphic Arts
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content: Popular Entertainment
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content: Cultures & Communities
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content: Family & Social Life
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content: Sports & Leisure
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content: Art
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Rueben L. Goldberg
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: GA.23483
label: catalog number
content: GA*23483
label: accession number
content: 299186
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Drawing
label: Object Type
content: Watercolor
label: Object Type
content: drawing
label: Other Terms
content: Drawing; Pen and Ink
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 48 cm x 58.3 cm; 18 7/8 in x 22 15/16 in