From Norbert Landsteiner, the maker of Google BBS, comes this rendition of Google if it existed in the 1960s. He says the goal of the project is to “explore distances and heroism in user interfaces,” but we’re just fond of the line-printer aesthetic. When using the 1960s search engine, the user enters search terms into a graphical punch card, and the results are returned through a line-printer theme. The surrounding graphics — the little dials and buttons — were created with a Mad Men theme in mind, to give the 1960s search engine a bit of a visual pop, considering the bulk of the interface consists of black and white printed lines.
To complete the theme, the search engine is quite noisy, with typewriter key clicks and bells, and constant printing and paper-loading noises. Luckily, there’s a volume dial with the option of “0,” so you don’t have to deal with the barrage of old-timey noises if you don’t want to. Once a search term is entered into the punch card, the user will be presented with the option of a text search, image search, or a general news search. When a mode is chosen, the system accesses its fictional peripheral storage, which is represented as a tape deck.
After the tape deck “loads” its information, the engine will print the search results, and it takes its sweet time doing so. The speed of the printing gimmick doesn’t make the engine very useful for real search tasks, but it is certainly worth playing around with for a bit of amusement. Don’t wait around for the search results to finish printing if you don’t want to — it takes quite a while, and the job doesn’t end with any kind of bells or whistles. For what it is, Google60 is pretty amusing, and is filled with a bunch of little details, but it won’t replace Google in a fun, gimmicky fashion.
