Hole punch history Google doodle celebrates 131-year-old product of German engineering

Marking the 131st anniversary of the hole punch tool, today’s Google doodle is a salute to German engineering, says the doodle team on the Google Doodle blog post.

“Today we celebrate 131 years of the hole puncher, an understated — but essential — artifact of German engineering.”

Leading to a search for “hole punch history,” the doodle was designed by doodler Gerben Steenks.

Here’s the fully animated doodle that resides on Google’s US home page, along with a number of its other international home pages.

From today’s write-up on Google’s Doodle blog, it sounds like someone on the Doodle team has a clear fascination with the tool:

The series of crisp, identical holes it produces, creating a calming sense of unity among an otherwise unbound pile of loose leaf. And finally, the delightful surprise of the colorful confetti byproduct — an accidental collection of colorful, circular leftovers.

Google notes that as workplaces go further into the digital frontier, the hole-puncher has remained mostly (and “wonderfully”) the same.