In honor of the inventor of the Zamboni Ice Resurfacer, more commonly called the "Zamboni," Google is offering an interactive Google Doodle today. Today would have been Frank Zamboni's 112th birthday.
The Zamboni is that large vehicle you see cleaning up the ice between periods in hockey games. To try out the Google's Zamboni Doodle, go to Google's homepage or follow this link. After clicking on Google's icon, it loads a simple, but addictive, little video game that puts you behind the wheel of a Zamboni. Using just the arrow keys on your keyboard, you pilot that Zamboni machine to resurface the ice of a skating rink after a cartoon ice skater goes out and scratches it up.
The game goes by rounds, which start over each time you successfully resurface the whole area and get harder as the ice skaters spend more time skating around mucking up the rink. You only have a limited amount of gas, and the faster you move the Zamboni around, the less traction you have, so be careful not to slam into the walls of the ice skating rink while frantically trying to complete a round! Luckily, you can refuel the Zamboni by picking up gas cans that appear on the ice, which means prolonging your game and getting hooked further into this fun little time waster.
Frank Zamboni, who died in 1988, invented his eponymous ice resurfacer in 1947. At the time, Zamboni and his brothers owned an ice skating rink in California, according to the 1988 Los Angeles Times obituary of Zamboni.
Speaking of wasting time, Zamboni and his brothers themselves spent too much time tending the ice - a major driving force behind the resurfacer's infvention.
"A big problem with the rink was that it took five men 90 minutes each night to lay down a new sheet of ice. Zamboni devoted the next eight years to replacing those five men and, when he did, it was with a machine only its mother could love," the Los Angeles Times' obituary reads.
The first Zamboni was powered by a jeep engine, made of two front-halves of cars, a wood bin to catch ice shavings, and a towel that dragged behind the machine, spreading hot water to resurface the ice. But it worked, and quickly too: it took only 15 minutes to complete that previously intensive 90-minute task.
In honor of Frank Zamboni, go to Google and try today's Doodle. You may find it takes up more than 15 minutes of your day.