Zamboni Doodle on Google Home Page
By Katherine McClosky :: 1:03 AM
If you landed on the Google home page today, you were greeted with this image at the right – an ice rink, complete with Zamboni game. All in honor of the 112th birthday of Frank Zamboni, the legendary ice resurfacing machine’s inventor.
In 1949, Zamboni transformed and simplified the ice arena management task of cleaning and resurfacing the ice – which used to take an hour and a half, and often required three to five people to do properly – by coming up with a device that could be driven across the ice and resurfaced it as it traveled along.
He applied for a patent on his device that same year and set up shop in Paramount, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles where he built and sold his machines. In the early days, Zamboni resurfacers were built on the top of a modified Jeep chassis.
Google’s doodle drawing is an interactive game where you are the Zamboni driver – you control it across the ice using your keyboard’s arrow keys, and clean up the ice after the skaters. As you successfully resurface the ice rink, a new level appears, more difficult than the last. Watch out for banana peels, and don’t speed too fast!
Below – Frank Zamboni.