Abstract
NOT MANY ENGINEERS' names pass into the language as a generic term, but when they do, such as with Dyson, you can bet it's because their inventions are destined to become classics. Yet, the name Heath Robinson has become a household term to apply to over-engineered contraptions — typically with dozens of cogs and miles of knotted string — usually to comical or satirical effect. We think of a ‘Heath Robinson’ device as something that, while fixing a genuine engineering conundrum, is absurd, over-complicated and impractical. In fact, it's the opposite of Occam's Razor (a medieval problem-solving principle, which says that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected).
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