A Brooklyn man has found modest internet fame by creating Rube Goldberg machines – complicated contraptions designed to elaborately perform simple tasks.

"I make chain reaction machines," Joseph Herscher says. "Dominoes that will hit a ball, and it will move a hammer and pull a string, and it usually does some really simple task at the end, like serving me a slice of cake."

The cake video garnered about 500,000 views on his YouTube channel.

Herscher now lives in Bushwick, but he is originally from New Zealand. He says he made his first machine at just 5 years old.

His most complex project took three months of planning and construction. He has hopes for more ambitious projects in the future.

"I would love to make a machine that uses construction site equipment – so cranes and bulldozers," he says.