''Widget Workshop: A Mad Scientist's Laboratory'' is a hands-on science kit, for use on the computer and off. It was released in

1995 1995 was designated as: * United Nations Year for Tolerance * World Year of Peoples' Commemoration of the Victims of the Second World War This was the first year that the Internet was entirely privatized, with the United States government ...

and is one of the more obscure

Maxis Maxis is an American video game developer and a Division (business), division of Electronic Arts (EA). The studio was founded in 1987 by Will Wright (game designer), Will Wright and Jeff Braun, and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1997. Maxis is ...

products. It was designed by Lauren Elliott, co-author of the ''

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? may refer to: * ''Carmen Sandiego'' (franchise), a media franchise sometimes referred to as ''Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?'' * ''Carmen Sandiego'' (video game series), several of which are titled ' ...

'' game series. The game has two main modes. Much like in '' The Incredible Machine'', users can solve a variety of puzzles using a limited selection of parts or tinker with the freeform mode. ''Widget Workshop'' focuses more on the freeform mode than the other game. Unlike the

Rube Goldberg Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg (July 4, 1883 – December 7, 1970), better known as Rube Goldberg (), was an American cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor. Goldberg is best known for his popular cartoons depicting complicated ...

nature of ''The Incredible Machine'', the parts in ''Widget Workshop'' are not restricted to the mechanical or physical. Items include display boxes, graphing windows, random number generators, and mathematical tools ranging from addition and subtraction to

Boolean logic In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is a branch of algebra. It differs from elementary algebra in two ways. First, the values of the variable (mathematics), variables are the truth values ''true'' and ''false'', usually denot ...

gates and trigonometric functions. The items can be connected in a manner similar to

dataflow programming In computer programming, dataflow programming is a programming paradigm that models a program as a directed graph of the data flowing between operations, thus implementing dataflow principles and architecture. Dataflow programming languages share ...

. While the arrangement of the items on screen does not matter, the connections do: a numerical constant box could be connected to a mathematical function; connected to a graph, which would display a horizontal line; input as a color value on an RGB monitor; or even used to trigger a sound effect.

External links

''Widget Workshop''
at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controlle ...

Promotional video
(from the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

) 1995 video games DOS games Maxis games Science educational video games Single-player video games Video games developed in the United States Visual programming languages Windows games {{puzzle-videogame-stub