Today's Google Doodle is in honor of both Valentine's Day and the inventor of the Ferris wheel. George Ferris, who invented his eponymous carnival attraction, would have been 154 today.
Google's interactive doodle depicts a night scene of an amusement park. A roller coaster makes up the first G, a go kart track makes up the second, a giant drop makes up the L, and perhaps a the carousel in the far right is the e - this is one of Google's more indistinct doodle logos.
At the center, though, are the two Os of Google, made of two Ferris wheels. There's a big red heart button between them, and when you click the button, the Ferris wheels spin and produce cartoon graphics of two different animals, followed by a little one-to-three panel cartoon depicting their unlikely Valentines date.
It's a cute way to celebrate two things at once. However, not to be a critic, this doodle is less interactive and creative than some others Google has done in the past, especially last month's Zamboni machine game.
Still, George Ferris deserves his celebratory doodle. Originally a bridge builder in Pittsburgh, George Ferris created his wheel, 120 years ago, to be the centerpiece of Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition, the same futuristic turn-of-the-century show which featured a rivalry over the future of electricity between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla.
With a total capacity of 2,160, the first Ferris wheel rotated on a 71-ton, 45.5-foot axel and was powered by thousand-horsepower steam engines. Though it was dismantled a year after its creation, and finally scrapped in 1906, the Ferris wheel is still with us, its descendants being ubiquitous in traveling carnivals, the London Eye, and now, a Google doodle.
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