Interesting. "It was also the era of increasing automation, and increasing concern about automation, exemplified in Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece Modern T

Interesting. "It was also the era of increasing automation, and increasing concern about automation, exemplified in Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 masterpiece Modern Times. One of the film’s dystopian curiosities, the Billows Feeding Machine, invented by Mr. J. Widdecombe Billows, has a distinctly Rube Goldbergian quality to it — this is likely no coincidence, as Goldberg and Chaplin were friends. "The Billows Feeding Machine will eliminate the lunch hour, increase your production, and decrease your overhead," the film’s narrator announces. "Don’t stop for lunch: be ahead of your competitor." A factory worker is strapped into the feeding machine by his neck; the device malfunctions spectacularly."