Heath Robinsonn.

1917 ‘Contact’ Airman's Outings i. 12 The movable mounting for the observer's gun in the rear cockpit... We called it the Christmas Tree, the Heath Robinson, the Jabberwock, the Ruddy Limit, and names unprintable.

1930 Telegr. & Teleph. Jrnl. June 180/2 The tour commenced at the principal machine shop. Here one is introduced to what on first acquaintance appears to be a Heath Robinson nightmare.

1931 D. L. Sayers Five Red Herrings xiii. 137 ‘Not very lively,’ he mused; ‘better, I think, for a Heath Robinson picture.’

1934 Discovery Nov. 328/2 This ‘Heath-Robinson’ jumble of wooden sheds, sluices, and water troughs looks ridiculous, yet it works all right.

1963 Times 26 Feb. 9/5 Some of the devices look somewhat Heath Robinson and rather like a film set, but of their serious purpose the visitor is left in no doubt.

1968 N. Freeling This is Castle iii. iii. 163 The English talked about things being ‘Heath-Robinson’ to this day, quite rightly—he recalled the man from his own childhood, a caricaturist who filled his drawings with wonderful complicated mechanisms made out of every kind of rubbish-tip junk held together with knotted bits of string.

1951 R. Campbell Light on Dark Horse xiii. 175 In the bay was the Heath-Robinsonesque, palm~crested fortress of Goree.

1960 L. Davidson Night of Wenceslas xiii. 207 It was surely a bit of a Heath-Robinsonish way of passing valuable secrets.

1962 New Scientist 29 Mar. 762/2 Certain general principles of heathrobinsonism.