The Google doodle for today celebrates the 78th birthday of musical synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog. The doodle itself is neat enough visually, but mouse those buttons and dials and you’ll discover it’s a fully functioning rendition of a Moog synth, with recording and playback.
Oh, and that issue of how to pronounce Robert’s surname? Apparently, there are three ways. The original Dutch would be Moch (with a short o, as in cop, and a thick, gutteral ch (as in the composer Bach). Us Brits usually pronounce it Mooog (with a long oo as in coool). Robert himself prefers a more Germanic pronunciation to rhyme with vogue, mogue. It should be a “Mogue” synthesiser. Except of course that even members of his family will use all three and perhaps other variants. I suspect if I started talking about Moch or Mogue synthesisers here in the UK I’d get some funny luchs from people confused by my novel brogue.