The 60th anniversary of the unveiling of London’s famous Routemaster bus is being celebrated with a Google doodle on Wednesday. The vehicle, which replaced the capital’s fleet of electric trolley buses, was first shown to the public by London Transport at the Earl’s Court Commercial Motor Exhibition on 24 September 1954.

The organisation had been involved with producing Halifax bombers in the Second World War and gained considerable expertise of working with lightweight aluminium and new manufacturing methods. As a result the design was much lighter than its predecessor despite having 64 seats, compared with 56, and being slightly wider at 2.43 metres.

Production did not commence until 1959 and a total of 2,760 Routemasters were made for London over the next nine years. The design proved to be enduringly popular with passengers and the last Routemaster stayed on the streets until 2005, until new accessibility rules made them unviable.

A handful are still used on parts of route 9 and 15 as a tourist attraction.

The concept was given a new lease of life by Boris Johnson, who promised to revive the Routemaster if elected as mayor in 2008. The new version of the bus, designed by Thomas Hetherwick, incorporates the “hop-on, hop-off” design of the original, and is built by Wrightbus in Northern Ireland at a cost of £335,000 each.

The first New Routemaster took to the streets on 27 February 2012 and is deployed on eight daytime routes in London.