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Fellowes, Inc. Sponsors Annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest
Invention Competition Honoring Pulitzer Prize Winner Seeks A New Way To Shred
Paper
Itasca, Ill. (March 3, 2006) - Fellowes, Inc., the nation's leading shredder
company, announced today that it will sponsor the 23rd annual Rube Goldberg
Machine Contest on April 1 at Indiana's Purdue University. This year's design
challenge is to create a machine or shredder that cuts or shreds five sheets of
8 1/2-by-11-inch, 20 pound paper into strips, in a minimum of 20 steps.
Fellowes, Inc., the category leader and innovator for shredders, today unveiled
a new national advertising campaign featuring a new icon - a bulldog - as the
ultimate protector of one's identity. The campaign's creative direction relies
on a theme of "powerful protection," as the bulldog embodies Fellowes'
positioning as the watchdog of a consumer's good name and good credit. The
campaign's tagline is "Fellowes: The World's Toughest Shredders."
The competition is organized by the Phi Chapter of Theta Tau, the National
Student Engineering Organization, and will host college and university teams
from across the U.S. Regional winners will be determined during competitions on
March 4 with winners competing at the national contest on April 1.
Inspired by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Reuben Lucius Goldberg, the
contest is designed to pull students out of the conventional problem-solving
mind set and compel them to use creativity to solve a problem. Instead of just
"solving" the problem, participants will have to use convoluted and complicated
steps to get the task done. For example, last year's winners took 125 steps to
change the batteries in a flashlight and turn it on. Past challenges include
shutting off an alarm clock, toasting a slice of bread, and putting toothpaste
on a toothbrush.
"The Rube Goldberg design challenges often coincide with world and cultural
events; for example, the election ballot machines contest in 2004. Today's news
often involves identity theft and the need to shred documents, so sponsoring
this year's shredder contest is a perfect fit, as well as a great opportunity,
for Fellowes," said Jude Rake, an engineering graduate of Purdue University and
president and chief operating officer for Fellowes, Inc. "As the leading
shredder manufacturer, we have a strong interest not only in the contest's
challenge, but also in the future engineers that will be displaying their
talents at Purdue's College of Engineering."
About Fellowes
Headquartered in Itasca, Illinois, Fellowes, Inc. offers an impressive range of
products to equip the workspace, including paper shredders, binders and
laminators, desktop accessories and record storage solutions. Fellowes, Inc.
owns and operates subsidiaries in Canada, United Kingdom, Benelux, France,
Germany, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Japan, Korea and Australia. The company
employs more than 1,200 people throughout the world and expects global sales in
excess of $700 million this year.
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Copyright ©2008, Fellowes, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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