10 Most-Viewed Rube Goldberg Machines of All-Time

As you can see in today's 4 @ 4 AM, one of the day's trending clips is this impressive Rube Goldberg contraption from 2D Photography, which uses only camera equipment. We decided to look at the data for the 10 most-viewed such videos of all-time.

There are some well-known machines that didn't make the cut -- like this proposal -- but the ones that did make it varied from simple at-home creations to elaborate works by creative professionals.

Of course, our list is topped off by one of the most-watched videos of 2010, the machine created for Ok Go's "This Too Shall Pass."

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Methodology: We ranked the most-viewed videos containing "rube goldber" in their title or in their tags and removed 3D animations -- except 1 -- as well as documentary clips and domino-based contraptions. We'll save the dominoes for another time.

The Most Popular 'TED Talks'

Following last week's TED Conference -- Technology, Entertainment and Design -- we looked into YouTube search data and have found that searches for "TED Talk" have gradually been increasing over time and recently have been reaching their highest point ever. TED's channel is also now the #1 subscribed non-profit channel on YouTube and over 200 talks have been posted in the past year alone. Videos from TED, the slogan for which is "Ideas Worth Spreading," have been viewed around 60 million times.

So which ideas have "spread" the most on YouTube, so to speak? The most-watched TED talk from the past year is the "Minority Report"-style interface demo by inventor John Underkoffler, but the top five most-viewed are all from at least a few videos, and, unlike the usual trending videos featured here, these videos have gradually accumulated their high view counts over time.

At the top of the diverse list is Tony Robbins 2007 talk:



(Click the bars to view videos.)