Today on Google's home page is a special logo for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Hertz was born a 155 years ago and Google wanted people to remember him and his contributions to the world.
Here is the logo:
It is basically an animated gif.
The wave logo represents electromagnetic waves. Hertz was the first to prove they indeed exist. He proved they exist in 1887 when he ran an experiment to measure the waves and their distance traveled.
What is interesting is that a person, Eric Hanson, in the Google Webmaster Help forums is claiming the Google Logo doesn't accurately represent the wave patterns and structure that Hertz was responsible for proving back in 1887. Eric said:
Hertz described sound frequencies which are strictly sinusoidal in nature, for a company that has so much to do with the sciences, I wonder why the wave for today' Google Doodle is clearly erroneous as it relates to the type of waves that Hertz described.
This stuff is beyond me but even if it isn't the wave Hertz is responsible for proving - who cares, the point is to get the message out about his contributions to the world.
Hertz was born today 155 years ago in Hamburg, German and died at the young age of 36 on January 1, 1894. He died from an infection and was buried Ohlsdorf, Hamburg at the Jewish cemetery. For more about Hertz, see his Wikipedia page.
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums and Google Webmaster Help.
Update: Google posted this on their Google+ page:
We're making waves with our doodle for Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the German physicist who proved the existence of electromagnetic waves and whose research contributed to the invention of television and radio. For those of you who remember your high school physics, you'll know he's also the namesake of the unit hertz (Hz), which measures frequency. Visit the homepage to see it in action.
