When was heath robinson born

Samsung makes essentially the same gadgets as Apple and Sony. His gadgetry -- despite how daft it was and because of how daft it was -- really embodied the crazy, but innovative culture of Great Britain. That's something that modern technology, however efficient it is, doesn't have.

His machines are very culturally prescriptive, but the ones we have now are global and interchangeable. To pay homage to The Gadget Man, Lim has developed an architectural concept called the Sky Transport Project , which replaces London Underground's Circle Line with long, narrow boats tasked with traversing "the urban sky-river" to alleviate some of the ground congestion and offer a low-carbon alternative for commuters.

I found the Circle Line infuriating. So I purposefully looked into creating a design where the contraption is much more backwards and you require people to row this boat.

His work has also provided food for thought for members of the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre , a group of automata creators including Paul Spooner and Keith Newstead.

Spooner told WIRED: "His pictures are mechanical stories and his brilliance lies not only in the draughtsmanship but in his humour and his attitudes -- a lesson for automata makers who are prone to getting over-excited by machinery for its own sake. Beare goes even further, suggesting that Robinson forecast chaos theory through a series of drawings called "Consequences", published in Hutchinson's Magazine in These showed chains of events happening in cause-and-effect sequences that seemed very unlikely.

One example is titled "How a Sermon may be cut short by the mere falling of an Autumn Leaf". While James York and Edward Lorenz no relation to the German Lorenz machine might have something to say about Beare's generosity towards Robinson's legacy, it's clear that these illustrations evoke the spirit of chaos theory in an incredibly accessible way.

Despite being immortalised in the dictionary, and having had so much influence on artists, writers including the aforementioned HG Wells , designers and architects, and despite all of the hard work of the William Heath Robinson Trust, Robinson has missed the [presumably kettle-powered] boat in terms of national recognition. He produced more work than Lowry! Arguably he's had more of an effect on British society," says an impassioned Endeacott.

Robinson's US counterpart, Rube Goldberg , on the other hand has been treated with more reverence: he has been featured on postage stamps, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, and annual competitions to build Rube Goldberg machines are held in his honour. He writes that the similarities between Goldberg and Robinson are "obvious", however he believes that Robinson's work is full of "fantasy and whimsy and cosiness", while Goldberg "is thoroughly a cartoonist, in the American, point-scoring style, with the harder tabloid American edge of drawing".

Gopnik adds: "Robinson's machines are eccentric; Goldberg's are practical -- you can build them, as in the game of Mouse Trap -- and so, because they are practical and buildable, they are, in another way, sinister. They appear too close to actual machines to be dismissed as mere whimsy. Beare contests Gopnik's analysis: "What he is saying is that Goldberg is not a cissy artist but a macho cartoonist in the tabloid tradition.

Goldberg trained as a mining engineer and worked for the San Francisco Department of Water and Sewage before finding employment as a sports cartoonist in and as a cartoonist was entirely self-taught. In his early humorous work he was a surrealist and he always said that for his pictures to work, the reader had to believe that the artist took his subject entirely seriously.

That his drawings are beautifully rendered and his contraptions set against fine landscapes or townscapes is an essential part of the joke. He adds: "I do not think that Mr Gopnik would disagree with me that Goldberg was an engineer who drew cartoons and Heath Robinson was an artist who drew some contraptions.

At the time of Heath Robinson's death in , only a minority of the public remembered his work as a serious illustrator. Beare hopes that in funding a permanent museum currently there is a small collection that can be viewed on Wednesdays and Saturdays , it will help people understand that the meaning we ascribe to the term "Heath Robinson" is "relevant but not sufficient". He was also an accomplished fantasy book illustrator and watercolourist.

Indeed, the man himself seemed to have "got a bit fed up with" the continual use of his name in association with bizarre rickety contraptions and the associated rumours that he was locked up in an asylum and allowed out once a week to deliver his invention. Evidence for this is a studio portrait, shot in Evidently a carefully composed shot, it features a range of his work in the background -- illustration, watercolours, magazine covers.

Conspicuous by their absence, were his contraptions. WIRED suggested to Beare that perhaps Robinson fell victim to the same po-faced solemnity he so mocked in the subjects of his illustrations -- taking his fine artworks too seriously and not stepping back to appreciate what everybody else could see.

Beare says this is unfair and that he "saw it as his profession and appreciated it". It allowed him to send his children to public school, go on holidays and hire a car with a driver. By the 40s he even had a BBC radio programme trying -- somewhat absurdly -- to advise children on how to draw. Herman Melville Biography. Jerry Pinkney Biography. James Fenimore Cooper Biography. Book Collecting. Illustrations Art Gallery. Copy link. Copy Copied. Powered by Social Snap.

His name became an adjective to describe such ad hoc devices. He soon found that over-complicated machinery would serve as a metaphor for the bureaucracy and arcane processes that such people invent. In Heath Robinson made a series of eight drawings showing how a trivial occurrence can, through a series of unpredictable consequent events, lead to a disastrous outcome.

These pictures anticipate Chaos Theory. It began with the wonderful How to live in a Flat in which he not only described the many gadgets that could make flat life more comfortable, but also satirised modernist architecture and design.

Architecture is gently mocked, with corner windows and balconies much in evidence. An extended section explores the possibilities of tubular steel furniture.

Throughout his adult life he would spend much of his limited spare time either drawing or painting. The combination of his facility with the medium and his unique vision means that, although these pictures are completely different from his commercial work, they are immediately recognisable as his.

As a man, Heath Robinson was shy, modest, gentle and enjoyed family life. He enjoyed the company of his fellow artists; he was a regular attendee at the London Sketch Club and the Savage Club. He was a genuinely good person — there was no bitterness in his humour, he never made racial jokes and he steered clear of politics. It is this that ensures that his work appeals to people of all ages and diverse backgrounds.