Contraption (Homage to Rube Goldberg & Heath Robinson)

A Rube Goldberg machine, named after American cartoonist Rube Goldberg, is a chain reaction–type machine or contraption intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and (impractically) overly complicated way. Usually, these machines consist of a series of simple unrelated devices; the action of each triggers the initiation of the next, eventually resulting in achieving a stated goal.

William Heath Robinson (1872–1944), ingenious English cartoonist and illustrator best known for his drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives. Heath Robinson became so popular that, to this day, a ludicrously impractical or elaborate machine is called “a Heath Robinson contraption” and the name “Heath Robinson” became part of common parlance in the UK for complex inventions that achieve absurdly simple results.