14 DAY TRIAL // The 4th of July is cause for celebration in the US, as the nation marks its independence, like you inevitably know even if you don’t live in the US. What you may not know is that the 4th of July is also the birthday of Rube Goldberg’s, an American cartoonist and inventor. If you’re not familiar with his name, you’re surely familiar with the products of his work, what are known as Rube Goldberg machines designed to do menial tasks in convoluted ways.
Google has a tradition of marking special occasions on its homepage with doodles, images that spell out the Google name in interesting ways. In recent years, the company has done this quite often to the point that there are more than one event which Google would want to celebrate on the same day. This was the case now and Google did what it sometimes does in these cases, it combined the two.
The Google doodle in the US for the 4th of July this year was a, decidedly American themed, Rude Goldberg machine that set off fireworks on the Google homepage. Animated doodles have been featured before, the first marking Sir Issac Newton’s birthday with a falling apple, an allusion to the popular anecdote on the inspiration for the theory of gravitation.
The 4th of July animation starts with a fireworks rocket that sets off a chain reaction which eventually leads to another rocket being lit up and then filling the screen with a fireworks display. If you’ve missed it on the Google homepage you can check out the video below captured by a YouTube user. You can also check out some of the frames in the animation, if you’re looking for a higher quality representation.
Google recently celebrated the Summer Solstice with two series of doodles, one for each half of the globe. It is also running a “I love football” international doodle competition which has entered the final round.
