Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Google barcode logo today!




The Google doodle today is a barcode!

What is the significance of October 7 to the barcode? According to Wikipedia, on October 7, 1952, the US Patent Office granted Patent 2,612,994 for the barcode to Norman Joseph Woodland, Bernard Silver and Jordin Johanson.

The history of the doodle
There's a colorful history to the Google doodle. According to the Google Story, the first Google doodle was designed by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 to serve as an out-of-office announcement to their users. To people who knew, the doodle signified that Page and Brin went to the Burning Man festival, and if Google went down that day, no one will be there to fix it. See the historic doodle below.

Since then Google has been regularly changing its doodles depending on the occasion. According to Wikipedia, "Google doodles have been produced for the birthdays of several noted artists and scientists, including Andy Warhol, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Louis Braille, Percival Lowell, Edvard Munch, Nikola Tesla, Béla Bartók, René Magritte, Michael Jackson, H.G. Wells, Samuel Morse, Hans Christian Ørsted and Mahatma Gandhi among others.[2] Additionally, the featuring of Lowell's logo design coincided with the launch of another Google product, Google Maps. Google doodles are also used to depict major events at Google, such as the company's own anniversary.[6] British novelist Roald Dahl has been featured, with the logo containing characters and items from some of his books, such as Matilda. The celebration of historical events is another common topic of Google Doodles including a Lego brick design in celebration of the interlocking Lego block's 50th anniversary."

Here's one doodle that appeals to me - the MC Escher doodle!

blog comments powered by Disqus