Adolphe Sax: 5 things you need to know about today’s Google Doodle celebrating inventor of the saxophone

He inspired Google to invent its own illustrated instrument

The sax in 'saxophone' recognises its inventor (Wikimedia)

Musical instrument inventor Adolphe Sax has been singled out for recognition in today’s Google doodle.

There are five variants of the search engine illustration, four of which has the bearded Belgian blowing into one of his signature inventions and one of him blowing into the word ‘Google’.

Here's the Googlehorn (Google)

Here are five things you should know about Sax and his sax:

1. He invented the saxophone aged just 32, filing a patent in 1846

2. He also invented the whole sax musical family — a bunch of brass instruments including the saxhorn, saxotromba and saxtuba. The saxhorn has endured, but the rest didn’t take quite so well.

3. He was expert at the flute and clarinet, having studied the instruments at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in his native Belgium.

4. After his death in 1894, at 79 years old, he was buried at the world-famous Montmartre cemetery in Paris.

5. Such is Google’s esteem for Sax’s inventiveness, they have coined the Googlehorn in his honour: an attempt by Doodle designer Lydia Nichols to make an instrument as interesting as his were.

"If you were alive in the mid-nineteenth century and had a particularly keen ear for music, you might have noticed a void somewhere between the brass and woodwind sections," Google wrote in a blog about the man.

"Adolphe Sax certainly did, and being both a talented musician and the enterprising man that he was, he started tinkering and endeavored to fill it. The result was the iconic, honey-toned instrument still bearing his name: the saxophone."