The Google Doodlers have been at it again and this time they've created a special animated Doodle to celebrate both St. Valentine's Day and the 155th birthday of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.
Ferris was an American engineer most famous for creating the original Ferris Wheel which debuted at the1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Born in Galesburg, Illinois in 1859, Ferris attended the California Military Academy and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before going on to a career in the railroad and bridge-building. He went on to found his own company that tested and inspected metals intended for use in the industry.
Ferris was drawn to Chicago by news of the World's Columbian Exposition. The Exposition organizers issued a challenge for American engineers to build something "original, daring and unique." His ride-on wheel design was initially dismissed as unsafe but Ferris persisted and returned to the planners with endorsements that allowed his project to go ahead. When the fair opened Ferris' wheel carried 38,000 passengers a day. The wheel was demolished 13 years later, after carrying 2.5 million paying customers and outliving its creator, as Ferris had passed away in 1896 of typhoid fever.
Today's Google Doodle features an animated fairground scene with two Ferris wheels at its center. Press the big red button with a heart on it (go on, you know you can't resist) and both wheels will spin, coming to a stop as two of the carriages line up at random. Each carriage contains an animal cartoon character. For each combination you'll get to see how their Valentine's Day date went. Some are simple drawings, others are cartoon strips and some of the dates are decidedly more successful than others.
My favorites so far have involved the octopus whose expression during his date with a brown bear almost had me falling off my chair with tears of laughter.
You can get a sneak peek of the Valentine's/Ferris Wheel Doodle on Google's UK site before it goes live on Google in the US. Go check it out and tell us which pairings you enjoy the most!
