The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, ΤΒΠ, or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society in the United States and the second oldest collegiate honor society in America. It honors engineering students who have shown a history of academic achievement as well as a commitment to personal and professional integrity. Specifically, the association was founded "to mark in a fitting manner those who have conferred honor upon their Alma Mater by distinguished scholarship and exemplary character as students in engineering, or by their attainments as alumni in the field of engineering, and to foster a spirit of liberal culture in engineering colleges."^[2][3][4]

History[link]

When academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa sought to restrict its membership to students of the liberal arts in the late 19th century, Edward H. Williams Jr., a member of Phi Beta Kappa and head of the mining department at Lehigh University, formulated the idea of an honor society for those studying technical subjects. Irving Andrew Heikes, the valedictorian of his class at Lehigh, was initiated as the first student member of Tau Beta Pi on June 15, 1885.^[3] A statue on Lehigh's campus commemorates this event.

In 1892, a second chapter was established at Michigan State University. Since then, the association has grown to 244 collegiate chapters across the United States and Puerto Rico. Tau Beta Pi was a founding member of the Association of College Honor Societies.^[5] The national headquarters of Tau Beta Pi are currently located in Knoxville, Tennessee on the campus of the University of Tennessee.^[3]

Although Tau Beta Pi never discriminated on the basis of race or religion, Tau Beta Pi did make its start as a male-only society. Female engineering students were scholastically eligible for Tau Beta Pi as early as 1902; however, those women were not granted membership. Starting in 1936, TBP awarded a women's badge to exceptional female engineering students, and a total of 619 women's badges were awarded until 1969. In 1969, Tau Beta Pi began granting women full membership in the society.^[6]

In 1974, the Sigma Tau fraternity merged with Tau Beta Pi. Sigma Tau was an honor society for engineering much like Tau Beta Pi and was founded at the University of Nebraska in 1904. At the time of the merger, Sigma Tau consisted of 34 collegiate chapters and a total membership of 45,000. The basis of the merger of Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Tau was the conviction that a single, strong honor society would better serve the engineering profession.^[3]

Insignia[link]

The colors of Tau Beta Pi are seal brown and white, which are the school colors of Lehigh. The official badge, called the Bent, is a watch key in the shape of the bent of a trestle (see picture). The trestle is the load-bearing part of the bridge, representing Tau Beta Pi's principle of Integrity and Excellence In Engineering. Originally the keys could be used to wind watches. However, because watches have since been fabricated with their own winding mechanisms, modern keys do not. The symbols on the Bent are an ancient form of Greek letters. The quarterly magazine of Tau Beta Pi is also titled The Bent.^[3]

Chapters[link]

Collegiate Chapters[link]

As of March 2011, there are 244 collegiate chapters. Of those, there are 237 active chapters and 7 inactive chapters.^[1][7] A chapter is designated 'inactive' when their engineering school shuts down or merges into another university. Each chapter is assigned a chapter name based on their state and order of initiation into the society. The order is designated by a Greek letter.

For example, the first three chapters of Pennsylvania are:

• Lehigh University is "PA Α" or "Pennsylvania Alpha" (1885)
• Pennsylvania State University is "PA Β" or "Pennsylvania Beta" (1912)
• Carnegie Mellon University is "PA Γ" or "Pennsylvania Gamma" (1916)

California is the only state, thus far, to exceed 24 chapters and move into double letter indications. The 25th chapter, California State University, Chico, is named "CA ΑA" or "California Alpha Alpha" (1996); and the 26th chapter, University of California, Riverside, is named "CA ΑΒ" or "California Alpha Beta" (2005), etc.

Alumnus Chapters[link]

Tau Beta Pi also has 59 alumnus chapters. Alumnus Chapters are composed by alumnus members of Tau Beta Pi in a geographical region, and receive their name accordingly. Unlike Collegiate Chapters, however, Alumnus Chapters do not initiate new members, although they may recommend persons to the Collegiate Chapters.

Membership[link]

Both undergraduate and graduate students are invited to become candidates of Tau Beta Pi based on their academic qualifications. Juniors who rank in the top eighth of their class and seniors who rank in the top fifth of their class are invited to become candidates for membership in Tau Beta Pi. Graduate students who have completed at least 50% of their degree requirements and who rank in the top fifth of their class are also eligible to become candidates for membership. Others who have had a large impact on engineering and society through engineering are often invited by individual chapters to join as eminent engineers.^[2][6]

Scholastically eligible students are elected by the chapter members based on their exemplary character. Electees become members after attending a members-only initiation ceremony. Membership dues are payable the year a candidate joins and last a lifetime.^[6]

Major activities[link]

Tau Beta Pi has an active fellowship and scholarship program supported by alumni members and other supporters.^[8] Some of the results of these programs are:^[2]

• 869 students have been given stipends exceeding $4,555,000 since 1929.
• 1,768 students to borrow more than $830,000 from the educational loan program since 1932.
• 479 students have received scholarship awards of $958,000 since 1998.

MindSET program[link]

One initiative provided by Tau Beta Pi is the MindSET (Math, Science, Engineering, Technology) K-12 program. This program is designed to foster interest in engineering among elementary, middle, and high school students with classroom and hands-on activities. The goal of MindSET is to have students completing algebra by 8th grade and calculus by 12th grade.^[9]

MindSET was first conceived by Dr. Jonathan F. Earle as GatorTRAX, a program run by the Florida Alpha chapter, and is in the process of being rolled out on a national level.

Notable members[link]

Tau Beta Pi's membership includes some famous figures in engineering and technology, including 19 nobel laureates:^[10]

• Michael Porter, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School & Notable Strategist
• Buzz Aldrin, second astronaut to walk on the moon
• Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder
• Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and mayor of New York
• Wernher von Braun, rocket scientist
• Frank Capra, movie director
• Leon Cordero, former president of Ecuador
• Seymour Cray, supercomputer pioneer
• Thomas Francis Farrell, Major General, United States Army
• Ernie Fletcher and Paul E. Patton, former governors of Kentucky
• Fred Haise, astronaut
• Michael Oluwagbemi, Frontier Market Strategist & Partner, LoftyInc Allied Partners
• Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler CEO
• Curtis Lemay, General, United States Air Force
• Linus Pauling, two time Nobel prize winner
• Dan Reneau, president of Louisiana Tech University
• Buddy Tudor, General contractor and real estate developer in Louisiana
• Stephen G. Bowen, astronaut currently in the STS-133 mission

Seven astronauts who died on Apollo 1, Space Shuttle Challenger, and Space Shuttle Columbia were also members of Tau Beta Pi. In their honor, a fellowship has been given out five times (1986, 1987, 1997, 1998, 2004). These astronauts and their chapters are:^[11]

• Gus Grissom, Apollo 1, Indiana Alpha 1950
• Edward White, Apollo 1, Michigan Gamma 1952
• Roger B. Chaffee, Apollo 1, Indiana Alpha 1957
• Ellison Onizuka, Challenger, Colorado Beta 1969
• Judith Resnik, Challenger, Pennsylvania Gamma 1970
• Dick Scobee, Challenger, Arizona Alpha 1965
• Rick D. Husband, Columbia, Texas Beta 1980

Notes[link]

References[link]

• "Tau Beta Pi Information Book" (pdf). Tau Beta Pi Association. http://www.tbp.org/pages/About/InformationBook/InfoBook.pdf. Retrieved 2009-01-01. 

External links[link]

• Official website
• Biography of Tau Beta Pi founder Prof. Edward H. Williams Jr.
• Association of College Honor Societies: Tau Beta Pi

Rube Goldberg
Born	Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (1883-07-04)July 4, 1883 San Francisco, California, United States
Died	December 7, 1970(1970-12-07) (aged 87)
Resting place	Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York
Occupation	Engineer, Sculptor, News Reporter, Cartoonist
Known for	Rube Goldberg machines

Reuben Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer and inventor.

He is best known for a series of popular cartoons depicting complex gadgets that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. These devices, now known as Rube Goldberg machines, are similar to those drawn by W. Heath Robinson in the UK and Storm P in Denmark^{[citation needed]}. Goldberg received many honors in his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning in 1948 and the Banshees' Silver Lady Award 1959.^[1]

Goldberg was a founding member and the first president of the National Cartoonists Society,^[2] and he is the namesake of the Reuben Award, which the organization awards to the Cartoonist of the Year. He is the inspiration for various international competitions, known as Rube Goldberg Machine Contests, which challenge participants to make a complex machine to perform a simple task.

Life[link]

Goldberg was born July 4, 1883, in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents Max and Hannah Goldberg. He was the second of four children (older brother Garrett, younger brother Walter, and younger sister Lillian). Rube married Irma Seeman in 1916. They lived at 88 Central Park West in New York City and had two sons named Thomas and George. He started drawing when he was only four years old. Goldberg did not share a surname with his children because of the amount of hatred towards him during World War II from the political nature of his cartoons. He ordered his sons to change their names from Goldberg for safety reasons. Both of his sons chose the last name of George, wanting to keep a sense of family cohesiveness. Thomas and George's children now run a company called RGI (Rube Goldberg Incorporated) to maintain the Goldberg name. John George (Thomas's son) is assisted by his cousin Jennifer George^[3] (George's daughter) and John's son Joshua George to keep the family name alive.^[4] Reuben died in 1970 at the age of 87, while his widow, Irma, died 20 years later on April 26, 1990 at the age of 95.^[5]

Career[link]

Rube Goldberg with family, 1929

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 College of Mining degree^[1] 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 the city to join the San Francisco Chronicle where he became a sports cartoonist.^[1] The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907.

Goldberg drew cartoons for five newspapers, including the New York Journal American|New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. His work entered syndication in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. He was syndicated by the McNaught Syndicate from 1922 until 1934.

A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously, including Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, Lala Palooza and The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club. The cartoons that brought him lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In that series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics of the comical "inventions" that would later bear his name.

Cultural legacy[link]

This postcard book, Rube Goldberg's Inventions!, was compiled by Maynard Frank Wolfe from the Rube Goldberg Archives. The cover illustration shows Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin. The "Self-Operating Napkin" is activated when the soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C), which throws cracker (D) past parrot (E). Parrot jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and lights automatic lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K), which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M) and allow the pendulum with the attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin.

In 1931 the Merriam-Webster dictionary adopted the word "Rube Goldberg" as an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complex means.^[6]

Predating Goldberg, the corresponding term in the U.K. was, and still is, "Heath Robinson", after the English illustrator with an equal devotion to odd machinery (although Heath Robinson's creations did not have the same emphasis on the sequential or chain reaction element).

Goldberg's work was commemorated posthumously in 1995 with the inclusion of Rube Goldberg's Inventions, depicting Professor Butts' "Self-Operating Napkin" in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. postage stamps.^[7]

Film and television[link]

Rube Goldberg wrote a feature film featuring his machines and sculptures called Soup to Nuts, which was released in 1930 and starred Ted Healy and The Three Stooges.

In the 1962 John Wayne movie Hatari!, an invention to catch monkeys by character Pockets, played by Red Buttons, is described as a "Rube Goldberg."

In the late 1960s and early 70s, educational shows like Sesame Street and The Electric Company routinely showed bits that involved Rube Goldberg devices, including the Rube Goldberg Alphabet Contraption, and the What Happens Next Machine.^[8][9]

Various other films and cartoons have included highly complex machines that perform simple tasks. Among these are Flåklypa Grand Prix, Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Wallace and Gromit, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, The Way Things Go, Edward Scissorhands, Back to the Future, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Goonies, Gremlins, the Saw film series, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Cat from Outer Space, Malcolm, Family Guy, and Waiting...

Also in the Final Destination film series the characters often die in Rube Goldberg-esque ways. In the film The Great Mouse Detective, the villain Ratigan attempts to kill the film's heroes, Basil of Baker Street and David Q. Dawson, with a Rube Goldberg style device. The classic video in this genre was done by the artist duo Peter Fischli & David Weiss in 1987 with their 30 minute video "Der Lauf der Dinge" or "The Way Things Go".

Honda produced a video in 2003 called "The Cog" using many of the same principles that Fischli and Weiss had done in 1987.

In 2005, the American indie/alternative rock band The Bravery released a video for their debut single, "An Honest Mistake," which features the band performing the song in the middle of a Rube Goldberg machine.

In 1999, an episode of The X-Files was titled "The Goldberg Variation". The episode intertwined characters FBI agents Mulder and Scully, a simple apartment super, Henry Weems (Willie Garson) and an ailing young boy, Ritchie Lupone (Shia LaBeouf) in a real-life Goldberg device.

The 2010 music video "This Too Shall Pass - RGM Version" by the rock band OK Go features a machine that, after four minutes of kinetic activity, shoots the band members in the face with paint. "RGM" presumably stands for Rube Goldberg Machine.^[10]

Games[link]

The popular 1963 board game Mouse Trap, as well as its sequels Crazy Clock (1964), and Fish Bait (1965) are based on Rube Goldberg machines.^{[citation needed]} Some examples of Goldberg-inspired video games are Incredibots, LittleBigPlanet, LittleBigPlanet 2, the 1990s-era series of The Incredible Machine games, and Crazy Machines.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

• Chindōgu
• Deathtrap (plot device)
• Domino effect
• Frederick Rowland Emett
• Jean Tinguely, Swiss artist who created Rube Goldberg–like sculptures
• Mickey One
• PythagoraSwitch
• Robert Storm Petersen (Storm P.), a Danish contemporary artist who drew "inventions" similar to Rube Goldberg's
• Steampunk

References[link]

External links[link]

• Great Video of Goldberg-type device made from Legos
• Toonopedia entry
• Smithsonian Archives of American Art: Oral History Interview, 1970
• Annual National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
• NCS Awards
• Rube Goldberg in 'Creative Contraptions'
• IMDB biography
• Rube Goldberg Honda Commercial, "Cog", at Snopes.com
• Guide to the Rube Goldberg Papers at The Bancroft Library
• 10 Viral Rube Goldberg clips at Salon.com