Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), known best as Rube Goldberg, was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated gadgets performing simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. The cartoons led to the expression "Rube Goldberg machines" to describe similar gadgets and processes. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for political cartooning in 1948, the National Cartoonists Society's Gold T-Square Award in 1955, and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award in 1959. He was a founding member and first president of the National Cartoonists Society, which hosts the annual Reuben Award, honoring the top cartoonist of the year and named after Goldberg, who won the award in 1967. He is the inspiration for international competitions known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to create a complicated machine to perform a simple task. Personal life Goldberg was born on July 4, 1883 in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Max and Hannah (Cohn) Goldberg. He was the third of seven children, three of whom died as children; older brother Garrett, younger brother Walter, and younger sister Lillian also survived. Goldberg began tracing illustrations when he was four years old, and took his only drawing lessons with a local sign painter. In 1911, the R. L. Goldberg Building at 182–198 Gough Street, San Francisco was constructed for his widowed father to live in, as well as to collect rental income. Goldberg married Irma Seeman on 17 October 1916. They lived at 98 Central Park West in New York City and had sons Thomas and George. During World War II, as each of his sons were heading off to college, Goldberg insisted that they change their surname because of anti-semitic sentiment towards him stemming from the political nature of his cartoons. Thomas chose the surname of George, and his brother, also named George, followed suit. In adopting the same surname, George wanted to keep a sense of family cohesiveness. Career Goldberg's father was a San Francisco police and fire commissioner, who encouraged the young Reuben to pursue a career in engineering. Rube graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 with a degree in Engineering and was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer for the Water and Sewers Department. After six months he resigned his position with