The manipulated image of Alex purported to be of Alan MacMasters
In February 2012, a group of British students edited the English Wikipedia article about electric toasters and inserted the false claim that a man named Alan MacMasters invented the toaster in 1893. One of the friends created a separate article about the fictitious Alan MacMasters in February 2013 and embellished it further in the following years. The fake article was cited by newspapers and other organizations until the hoax was exposed in July 2022.
The actual development of the pop-up toaster was based on technologies and features invented between 1890 and 1920 by various people and companies.
After the lecture, Alan and his friends visited the toaster article on Wikipedia, where one of his friends, Alex, edited the article to replace the lecturer's friend's name with Alan MacMasters, claiming he invented the toaster in Edinburgh, Scotland, 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 manipulated to resemble a 19th century photograph, and published it on Wikipedia. Alex and other editors extended and embellished the fictitious biography in the following years.[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 MacMasters 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. Alex then used these articles citing MacMasters as the inventor of the toaster to further propagate the false information.[1] Moreover, a primary school in Scotland dedicated a day to MacMasters, and he was nominated to appear on a £50 note by an individual who responded to a request for nominations from 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 and aftermath
In July 2022, a 15-year-old Redditor named Adam posted to the subreddit r/WikipediaVandalism, an online community dedicated to sharing instances of vandalized Wikipedia articles, revealing that the photo on Alan MacMasters' Wikipedia page was edited and not legitimate. This research was prompted after his teacher spoke about MacMasters in class and Adam looked up the article of the supposed inventor.[2] However, Adam was unaware that the entire article was a hoax. Adam reported his concern on the Internet forumWikipediocracy, 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][4]
Alex anonymously told Wikipediocracy that he initially thought the prank would not 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] Alan later said in an interview that he still edits Wikipedia as an apology, but remains anonymous out of fear of being banned.[5]
