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Friday, July 22, 2011

Alexander Calder's 113th birthday‎ : Google Doodles

Google Doodle on Friday, Jul 22 was featured to celebrate the 113th Birthday of American artist and sculptor Alexander Calder.

Alexander Calder is famous for inventing the mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture constructed to take advantage of the principle of equilibrium. Google featured a hanging mobile as the new doodle on its search engine home page. Visitors can rotate the mobile using the mouse. More over unlike any other interactive doodles, doodle for Alexander Calder shows its shadow below the search column.

According to Wikipedia, Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, on Jul 22, 1898. His father, Alexander Stirling Calder, was a well-known sculptor who created many public installations, a majority of them in Philadelphia.

The sculptor Alexander Calder is well known for his mobiles. Calder invented the mobile in 1931. Marcel Duchamp suggested the name "mobile". Mobiles are also popular in the nursery, where they hang over cribs to give infants something to entertain them and give them external visual stimulation.