Alan MacMasters hoax
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The Alan MacMasters hoax was a hoax article on Wikipedia that claimed that photography and ICT student Alan MacMasters was the inventor of the electric toaster.[1][2][3][4]
Origin
On 6 February 2012, photography and ICT student Alan MacMasters was at a university lecture where the class was warned not to use Wikipedia as a source. Additionally, the lecturer pointed out that his friend, Maddy Kennedy, had edited the Wikipedia article about toasters, falsely claiming she was the inventor.[1][2][3]
After the lecture, Alan and his friends visited the toaster article on Wikipedia, where one of his friends, Alex, edited the article to replace Maddy Kennedy's name with Alan MacMasters, claiming he invented the toaster in Edinburgh in 1893.[1][2][3]
A year later, Alex contemplated the extent to which he could escalate the prank. In February 2013, he created an article dedicated to Alan MacMasters, including an image of himself photoshopped to resemble a 19th century photograph, and published it on Wikipedia.[1][2][3]
In the article, Alex mentioned that the product was not commercially successful. He also attributed the invention of the electric kettle to MacMaster and suggested that the toaster had contributed to one of Britain’s earliest fatal appliance fires. One fabricated anecdote recounted a woman whose kitchen table caught fire after the toaster's heating elements melted.[2][4]
Alex intended the article as a jest; however, newspapers, encyclopedias, government agencies, and the Hagley Museum and Library in Delaware perpetuated the false story of MacMasters as the inventor, where Alex then used these articles citing MacMaster as the inventor of the toaster to further propagate the false information.[1] Moreover, a primary school dedicated a day to MacMasters, and he was nominated to appear on a £50 note at the request of the Bank of England. During the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Scottish Government-funded organizations cited Alan’s story as evidence of how an independent Scotland could succeed.[3][2]
Discovery
In July 2022, a 15-year-old Redditor named Adam posted an explanation, revealing that the photo on the Alan MacMasters Wikipedia page was fake. This discovery was prompted after his teacher spoke about MacMasters in class.[2] However, he was unaware that the entire article itself was a hoax. Adam reported his concern on the Internet forum Wikipediocracy, where users discovered the article’s fraudulent nature and alerted Wikipedia administrators, who promptly marked the page for deletion. Alex’s Wikipedia account, which he used to perpetrate the hoax, was subsequently blocked from the platform.[1][2][3][5][4]
Alex anonymously told Wikipediocracy that he initially thought the prank wouldn’t cause much harm. He described the first time he realized the prank was harmful was when he read a book about Victorian inventors and found Alan MacMasters listed as one of the inventors.[2]
The inventor credited with the creation of the electric toaster is Charles Strite. Working as a manufacturer in Stillwater, Strite observed that workers often received burnt toast during breaks. This inspired him to develop an appliance capable of toasting bread evenly, thus addressing the issue of burnt toast.[6]
See also
- Archived article and Deletion discussion on Wikipedia
- Charles Strite
- Citogenesis
- List of hoaxes on Wikipedia
References
- ^ a b c d e f Silva, Marco (18 November 2022). "Alan MacMasters: How the great online toaster hoax was exposed". BBC. Retrieved 2 June 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Cant, Ash (23 November 2022). "Alan MacMasters, the man the world thought invented the toaster". The New Daily. Retrieved 2 June 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f Felton, James (22 November 2022). "15-Year-Old Uncovers Major Wikipedia Toaster Hoax That Fooled The Media For Years". IFLScience. Retrieved 2 June 2024.
- ^ a b c Rauwerda, Annie (12 August 2022). "A long-running Wikipedia hoax and the problem of circular reporting". Input. Archived from the original on 4 September 2022. Retrieved 2 June 2024.
- ^ "Wikipedia's Credibility Is Toast | Wikipediocracy". wikipediocracy.com. Archived from the original on September 4, 2022. Retrieved September 11, 2022.
- ^ "The Demise of Burnt Toast: The Invention of the Pop-up Toaster". Hennepin History Museum. 10 September 2018. Retrieved 7 June 2024.
