If the Soap Falls Out of the Bathtub, Try This—

"If the soap falls out of the bathtub, try this—," and Goldberg is off. A man steps on a scale, which tugs a string, which tips a bucket, which startles a bird, and a dozen deadpan steps later the soap is retrieved: a whole Newtonian machine built to solve a problem nobody has. This 1921 newspaper page is the gag that eventually put his name in the dictionary. Goldberg trained as an engineer before he ever drew for a living, and it shows. He diagrams each useless contraption with the flat authority of a patent application, every pulley and lever lettered A through P and explained in a straight-faced key. The joke is the seriousness. He drew the modern faith in machinery and quietly let the air out of it, one absurd linkage at a time.