Rube Goldberg was an American cartoonist, inventor, and engineer born in 1883. He is known for creating cartoons depicting complicated machines to perform simple tasks. After initially studying engineering, Goldberg became a cartoonist drawing for newspapers in San Francisco and New York. He married Irma Seeman in 1916 and they had two sons. Goldberg died in 1970 at age 87, leaving a legacy as the namesake of the complex contraptions now known as Rube Goldberg machines.