W. Heath Robinson
Encyclopedia
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
and illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
, best known for drawings of eccentric machines.
In the UK, the term "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption, similar to "Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg 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...
" in the U.S. It is perhaps more often used in relation to temporary fixes using ingenuity and whatever is to hand, often string and tape, or unlikely cannibalisations. Its popularity is undoubtedly linked to Second World War Britain's shortages and the need to "make do and mend".
Career
William Heath Robinson was born at 25 Ennis Road on 31st May 1872 into a family of artists in an area of London known as Stroud Green, in Islington. His father and brothers (Thomas Heath Robinson and Charles RobinsonCharles Robinson (illustrator)
Charles Robinson was a prolific British book illustrator.Born in Islington in October 1870, London, he was the son of an illustrator and his brothers Thomas Heath Robinson and William Heath Robinson also became illustrators. He served an apprenticeship as a printer and took art lessons in the...
) all worked as illustrators. His early career involved illustrating books - among others: Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...
's Danish Fairy Tales and Legends (1897); The Arabian Nights, (1899); Tales From Shakespeare (1902), and Twelfth Night (1908), Andersen's Fairy Tales (1913), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1914), Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by the Reverend Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862–1863 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863...
(1915), and Walter de la Mare's
Walter de la Mare
Walter John de la Mare , OM CH was an English poet, short story writer and novelist, probably best remembered for his works for children and the poem "The Listeners"....
Peacock Pie (1916).
In the course of his work Heath Robinson also wrote and illustrated two children's books, The Adventures of Uncle Lubin (1902) and Bill the Minder (1912), which are regarded as the start of his career in the depiction of unlikely machines. During the First World War he drew large numbers of cartoons, collected as Some "Frightful" War Pictures (1915), Hunlikely! (1916), and Flypapers (1919), depicting ever-more-unlikely secret weapons being used by the combatants.
He also produced a steady stream of humorous drawings, for magazines and advertisements. In 1934 he published a collection of his favourites as Absurdities, such as:
- "The WartWartA wart is generally a small, rough growth, typically on a human’s hands or feet but often other locations, that can resemble a cauliflower or a solid blister. They are caused by a viral infection, specifically by human papillomavirus 2 and 7. There are as many as 10 varieties of warts, the most...
Chair. A simple apparatus for removing a wart from the top of the head" - "Resuscitating stale railwayBritish RailBritish Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
sconeScone (bread)The scone is a small Scottish quick bread especially popular in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,Belgium and Ireland, but are also eaten in many other countries. They are usually made of wheat, barley or oatmeal, with baking powder as a leavening agent...
s for redistribution at the station buffets" - "The multimovement tabbyTabby catA tabby is any cat that has a distinctive coat that features stripes, dots, lines or swirling patterns, usually together with an "M" mark on its forehead. Tabbies are sometimes erroneously assumed to be a cat breed. In fact, the tabby pattern is found in many breeds of cat, as well as among the...
silencer", which automatically threw water at serenading cats
Most of his cartoons have since been reprinted many times in multiple collections.
The machines he drew were frequently powered by steam boilers or kettles, heated by candles or a spirit lamp and usually kept running by balding, bespectacled men in overalls. There would be complex pulley
Pulley
A pulley, also called a sheave or a drum, is a mechanism composed of a wheel on an axle or shaft that may have a groove between two flanges around its circumference. A rope, cable, belt, or chain usually runs over the wheel and inside the groove, if present...
arrangements, threaded by lengths of knotted string. Robinson's cartoons were so popular that in Britain the term "Heath Robinson" is used to refer to an improbable, rickety machine barely kept going by incessant tinkering. (The corresponding term in the U.S. is Rube Goldberg
Rube Goldberg machine
A Rube Goldberg machine, contraption, device, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction...
, after an American cartoonist with an equal devotion to odd machinery. Similar "inventions" have been drawn by cartoonists in many countries, with the Danish Storm Petersen
Robert Storm Petersen
Robert Storm Petersen was a Danish cartoonist, writer, animator, illustrator, painter and humorist. He is known almost exclusively by his pen name Storm P.- Biography :...
being on par with Robinson and Goldberg.)
One of his most famous series of illustrations was that which accompanied the Professor Branestawm
Professor Branestawm
Professor Branestawm is a series of thirteen books written by the English author Norman Hunter. Written over a 50 year period, between 1933 and 1983, the children's books feature as protagonist the eponymous inventor, Professor Theophilus Branestawm, who is depicted throughout the books as the...
books by Norman Hunter
Norman Hunter (author)
Norman George Lorimer Hunter was a British children's author, best known for his novels' character Professor Branestawm.-Career:Hunter wrote popular books on writing for advertising, brain-teasers and conjuring among many others...
. The stories told of the eponymous professor who was brilliant, eccentric and forgetful and provided a perfect backdrop for Robinson's drawings.
One of the automatic analysis machines built for Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
during the Second World War to assist in the decryption of German message traffic was named "Heath Robinson
Heath Robinson (codebreaking machine)
Heath Robinson was a machine used by British codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II to solve messages in the German teleprinter cipher used by the Lorenz SZ40/42 cipher machine; the cipher and machine were called "Tunny" by the codebreakers, who named different German teleprinter...
" in his honour. It was a direct predecessor to the Colossus
Colossus computer
Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...
, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer.
In 1903 he married Josephine Latey, the daughter of newspaper editor John Latey
John Latey
John Latey was a British journalist and writer.Latey was a son of John Lash Latey , editor of the Illustrated London News from 1858 to 1890. He himself wrote parliamentary sketches for the ILN under the pseudonym 'The Silent Member'. He also wrote novels and translated Dumas and Paul Féval...
. Heath Robinson moved to Pinner
Pinner
- Climate :Pinner's geographical position on the far western side of North West London makes it the furthest London suburb from any UK coastline. Hence the lower prevalence of moderating maritime influences make Pinner noticeably warmer in the spring and the summer compared to the rest of the capital...
, Middlesex, in 1908. His house in Moss Lane is commemorated by a blue plaque
Blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....
. A project is now (2007) in hand to restore West House, in Memorial Park, Pinner, to house a Heath Robinson Collection.
In popular culture
Planet Earth (TV series)
Planet Earth is a 2006 television series produced by the BBC Natural History Unit. Five years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC, and also the first to be filmed in high definition...
documentary series, in which devices used to create smooth camera movements, such as the effective steadicam
Steadicam
A Steadicam is a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera that mechanically isolates it from the operator's movement, allowing a smooth shot even when moving quickly over an uneven surface...
made out of bicycle wheels and rope used to sail up a 100 metre high mound of bat droppings, were said by David Attenborough
David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS, FZS, FSA is a British broadcaster and naturalist. His career as the face and voice of natural history programmes has endured for more than 50 years...
to be "Heath Robinson affairs". It has also been used by Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson is an English broadcaster, journalist and writer who specialises in motoring. He is best known for his role on the BBC TV show Top Gear along with co-presenters Richard Hammond and James May...
in his programme Speed
Speed (TV series)
Speed was a BBC television series about the history of fast vehicles, including aeroplanes, boats and cars. The show was presented by Jeremy Clarkson and consisted of six episodes. Each focused on a different aspect of speed...
(Episode 5 — Superhuman Speed) when describing the piping in a space-rocket's engine. It was also used in a 2009 BBC Horizon programme (Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes) to describe a fault slip measuring device. And more recently it was in an episode of the BBC's long-running astronomy programme The Sky at Night to refer to a box-like device used for observing colour fractions of the Sun's light.
In Pink Floyd's
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
1971 concert film Live at Pompeii, Nick Mason
Nick Mason
Nicholas Berkeley "Nick" Mason is an English drummer and songwriter, best known for his work with Pink Floyd. He was the only constant member of the band since its formation in 1965...
described the band's early on-stage musical experiments as "Heath Robinson".
During the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
(1982), British Harrier
Harrier Jump Jet
The Harrier, informally referred to as the Jump Jet, is a family of British-designed military jet aircraft capable of vertical/short takeoff and landing operations...
aircraft lacked their conventional "chaff
Chaff (radar countermeasure)
Chaff, originally called Window by the British, and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe , is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of secondary...
" dispensing mechanism. Therefore Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
engineers designed an impromptu delivery system of welding rods, split pins and string which allowed six packets of chaff to be stored in the airbrake
Air brake (aircraft)
In aeronautics, air brakes or speedbrakes are a type of flight control surface used on an aircraft to increase drag or increase the angle of approach during landing....
well and deployed in flight. Due to its complexity it was often referred to as the "Heath Robinson chaff modification".
The episode "Japan's Last Secret Weapon" of the BBC series "Secrets of World War II" describes the balloons launched from Japan
Fire balloon
A , or Fu-Go, was a weapon launched by Japan during World War II. A hydrogen balloon with a load varying from a incendiary to one antipersonnel bomb and four incendiary devices attached, they were designed as a cheap weapon intended to make use of the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and wreak...
against the US West Coast as "a veritable Heath Robinson weapon of war".
David Langford
David Langford
David Rowland Langford is a British author, editor and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible.-Personal background:...
's farce novel The Leaky Establishment
The Leaky Establishment
The Leaky Establishment is a novel by David Langford, first published in June 1984 by Frederick Muller and re-issued, with an introduction by Terry Pratchett, in 2001 by Big Engine, then July 2003 by Cosmos Books ....
is set at a nuclear research facility on "Robinson Heath".
In the third volume of Market Risk Analysis, Carol Alexander uses the term "Heath Robinson approach" to describe the ad hoc approaches to modelling volatility by option pricing practitioners.
Publications
- Robinson, W. Heath, Railway Ribaldry, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd., England, Originally published 1935. ISBN 0-7156-0823-1
- Robinson, W. Heath, My Line of Life, Blackie & Sons. 1938,
- Robinson, W. Heath, Heath Robinson at War, London, Methuen. 1942,
- Lewis, John. Heath Robinson Artist and Comic Genius, Barnes and Noble. 1973,
- De Freitas, Leo John, The Fantastic Paintings of Charles and William Heath Robinson, Peacock/Bantam. 1976,
- Beare, Geoffrey. W. Heath Robinson, Chris Beetles. 1987,
- Hamilton, James, William Heath Robinson, Pavilion. 1992,
- Beare, Geoffrey, The Brothers Robinson, Chris Beetles. 1992,
- Beare, Geoffrey, The Art of William Heath Robinson, Dulwich Picture Gallery. 2003,
See also
- Norman Hunter (author)Norman Hunter (author)Norman George Lorimer Hunter was a British children's author, best known for his novels' character Professor Branestawm.-Career:Hunter wrote popular books on writing for advertising, brain-teasers and conjuring among many others...
- Professor BranestawmProfessor BranestawmProfessor Branestawm is a series of thirteen books written by the English author Norman Hunter. Written over a 50 year period, between 1933 and 1983, the children's books feature as protagonist the eponymous inventor, Professor Theophilus Branestawm, who is depicted throughout the books as the...
- Rube GoldbergRube GoldbergReuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg 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...
, American artist with similar cartoon inventions