Google Doodle Celebrates Robert Moog's 78th Birthday with Musical Tribute

Google has come up with a new doodle to celebrate the 78<sup>th birthday of Robert Moog, father of the electronic synthesizer, by displaying a working Moog Synthesizer on its home page.

The doodle of the Moog Synthesizer can be played by just clicking the piano keys using a mouse.

Moog is known as the father of electronic synthesizer, which was taken up by bands such as the Beatles and the Doors.

He was born in New York on 23 May, 1934. His mother was a piano teacher and his father was an electronic engineer. Moog's mother wanted him to become a famous pianist, so she taught him how to play piano. His father, meanwhile, wanted him to become an electronic engineer and taught him how to work with electronics.

When Moog was 14 years old, he built a theremin, the first electronic instrument in the world, which is made of vibrating radio tubes.

Moog continued to build theremins throughout high school, which he sold to finance his college education.

He earned a degree in physics from Queens College and then he did his master's degree in electrical engineering at Columbia University in 1957. Instead of getting a job after he completed his second degree, he chose to continue creating and selling his electronic kits in the early 1960s.

Whatever money he earned from them was used to create more electronic gadgets. One of his first stunning inventions was a guitar amplifier. Another great invention that shook the world was the electronic synthesizer.

RCA had created an earlier electronic synthesizer, but it was quite large and awkward for musicians to use.

Ever inventive, Moog went on to create the Minimoog and the Micromoog, which were more portable and could easily be used by musicians at concerts.

He won several awards for his wonderful inventions, including the Trustee's Award, Silver Medal of the Audio Engineering Society of America and a Grammy Award for his lifetime of technical achievements.

Moog died from a brain tumor on 21 August, 2005., but his inventions live on.