How two students created ‘the weirdest hoax on the internet’ that fooled major news outlets for over a decade
Do you know who the inventor of the electric toaster was?
If you’d checked Wikipedia a couple of years ago, you probably would have thought it was Alan MacMasters, a Scottish scientist who created the gadget in the late 1800s.
For the last decade, MacMasters has been hailed as a Scottish legend - more than a dozen books reference him, naming him as the inventor of the toaster.
Advert
In 2018, the Bank of England asked the public to nominate people who had made significant contributions to science for a chance for them to feature on the new £50 note.
MacMasters was among the 988 people put forward.
On a cooking show called the Great British Menu, chef Scott Smith even created a dessert in MacMasters’ honor.
It was widely accepted that he was the toaster inventor, but it took just one teenager to dismantle everything and uncover a hoax that had lasted over 10 years.
A teen unpicked the lies...
One 15 year old, known as Adam, learnt about MacMasters in school but after seeing his photo on Wikipedia, he grew suspicious.
Talking to the BBC, he said: “It didn't look like a normal photo. It looked like it was edited.”
Adam took his suspicions to a Reddit dedicated to busting fake Wikipedia pages.
He added: “A lot of people actually replied: ‘I have used that picture in a presentation for school’. I thought it was hilarious.”
Within a week, the page was labeled as a hoax and it turns out that the real Alan MacMasters is very much alive and working as an aerospace engineer.
How did the hoax begin?
The hoax began in 2012 when the real MacMasters sat in a university lecture where the tutor warned them against using Wikipedia as a reliable source.
The lecturer mentioned that a friend of his had named himself as the inventor of the toaster on the site.
At the time, MacMasters and his friend Alex were amused.
Speaking to the BBC, Alex recalled: “I just changed it so that it said that my friend, who sat next to me, Alan MacMasters, had in fact invented the toaster in Edinburgh in 1893. We had no idea who invented the toaster.”
Alex went on to give the fake MacMasters his own Wikipedia page and edited a photo of the supposed inventor.
The pair didn’t think anything more of it but the lie stuck and the fake story was retold by news outlets and even by a US museum.
When the truth came out, Alex’s account was blocked by Wikipedia.
So who really invented the toaster?
According to reports, the first patient for a successful toaster was filed by Frank Shailor in 1909, on behalf of the General Electric company in the US.
It’s believed that this was actually the first commercially sold electric toaster.