A project illustrating the works of Shakespeare, for which Robinson used a formal style, was never published because of the lack of a publisher in the United States.

The Wallace-Gromit household borrows heavily from a full-scale model of a contraption-filled house entitled 'The Gadget Family', designed and built for the Ideal Home Show in 1934 – there are even trapdoors delivering the family to the breakfast table.With illustrations salvaged from the family archives and commentary by Heath Robinson expert, Geoffrey Beare, Contraptions is the best possible introduction to the work of one of Britain’s great comic talents. Heath Robinson is best known as the creator of weird mechanical devices and strange gadgets, usually held together with knotted string.

A "Heath Robinson contraption" is perhaps most commonly used in relation to temporary fixes using ingenuity and whatever is to hand, often string and tape, or unlikely cannibalisations.Beare hopes that in funding a permanent museum (currently there is a small collection that can be viewed on Wednesdays and Saturdays), it will help people understand that the meaning we ascribe to the term "Heath Robinson" is "relevant but not sufficient". In 1925 Heath Robinson made a series of eight drawings showing how a trivial occurrence can, through a series of unpredictable consequent events, lead to a disastrous outcome.