Today’s Google Doodle honors a man that invented the first Battery in the 18th century.
Google Doodle‘s are great to revisit interesting people and history. Today the Google Doodle honors the 270th birthday of Alessandro Volta. The 18th century physicist invented the first battery that we user today in myriads of devices.
A world without batteries is hard to imagine. We still struggle to make batteries more efficient especially since the advent of electric cars. The research to find new and better ways to store energy will always be a major concern for humankind.
Volta got inspired for the first battery by a frog. While dissecting a frog a leg twitched from an electrical discharge. Volta concluded that the discharge came from two different metals touching the frog’s body when the twitch happened.
Alessandro Volta named his first battery Voltaic Pile. The device was a milestone back then in electrical science as it was easy to build and gave researchers for the first time a steady supply of electricity.
Google’s new Doodler, Mark Holmes, posted a report on how he created Volta’s Doodle. He took the inspiration from images of product posters from the 18th century. He then added Volta’s battery in the center. The animation lights up the Google logo to complete the Doodle with superb branding.
The first Google Doodle was born in 1998, before Google was even incorporated. The Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. In the 17 year long history of the Google Doodle the search giant created over 2,000 doodles.
You can revisit all Google Doodles in the Doodle archive.
