In 1942, at the New York mansion of the American industrialist John Pierpont Morgan, crowds filed past a large mural titled “Automatic Hitler-Kicking Machine,” which depicted a complex and satisfying contraption involving a cat, a mouse, a stripteaser, and the Führer. It was the first solo exhibition of the inventor and cartoonist Reuben Lucius “Rube” Goldberg, who was, by then, already famous for designing overly complicated machines that fixed everyday problems with wit and madness. A decade earlier, in 1931, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary had listed “Rube Goldberg” as an adjective, defining it as “accomplishing by complex means what seemingly could be done simply.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/07/history-of-rube-goldberg-machines.html