Russell W. Porter 1935 Porter always seemed to be sketching something, and in this 1936 illustration he created a Rube Goldberg style mirror grinding machine, with a napping amateur providing biometric timing control via heartbeat and breathing.
Hmm, interesting! I myself like Garfield though and Mutts. (image from http://kisbyto.blogspot.com/2012/06/garfield-cat.html.) (image is from http://mund0-f3liz.blogspot.com/2013/11/mutts-el-comic-de-los-perros-criollos.html.) Garfield is by Jim Davis and his site is https://garfield.com/. Mutts is by Patrick McDonnell, his site is http://www.mutts.com/l.
W. Heath Robinson (1872–1944) English artist best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives. In the UK, the term "Heath Robinson Contraption" gained dictionary recognition around 1912, as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance. The Wart Chair. A simple device for removing a wart from the top of the head.
@Nancy Hart Thanks for putting this thread back on the track. W. Heath Robinson was quite the British treasure! "Born in 1872 in London, into a family of illustrators, Heath Robinson’s working life spanned an interesting moment in the history of illustration, accommodating significant changes in print technology, aesthetic preference, and the field of illustration. Yet he survived economically and flourished in the public eye, largely due to his embrace of a broader range of visual work. This included traditional book and magazine illustration; the writing and illustration of his own children’s stories; an extensive body of work in commercial advertising; and a secondary career as an illustrator of humorous imagery. It is for his later comic illustrations, many of them featuring complex contraptions which performed simple tasks, that he is best remembered. He has been described as the “British Rube Goldberg."