Robert Bunsen

Robert Bunsen

Google's doodles have become increasingly awesome in the thirteen years they've been creating the custom logos. Recent honorees have included author Jules Verne, chemist Robert Bunsen, and legendary magician Harry Houdini. Today's doodle celebrates the birthday of guitarist and inventorLes Paul, who would have been 96 today.

Paul was an innovator in many aspects of music recording, and his invention of the solid-body electric guitar could be said to have really given birth to rock and roll. He also invented multi-track recording, which revolutionized studio recording methods. Google plays homage to this spirit of invention with the Les Paul doodle, using a combination of HTML5, JavaScript, and Flash.

It can probably be said without much argument that Google has really outdone itself with this one. Not only are the letters of the logo artfully designed to resemble the strings of a guitar, but the logo can actually be played, either by "strumming" the strings with your mouse, or playing them with the keys on your keyboard (to get the full range of notes, the QWERT row works best). You can even record, save, and share your masterpiece.

Needless to say, we here at Tecca Headquarters have been hard at work creating beautiful music for you, our adoring fans. Here are two of our Google Doodle masterworks.