Did you survive April Fools’ Day 2025? Or did you sign up for Duolingo’s five-year world cruise? April Fools’ Day is a love-it-or-hate-it tradition in the technology world, with Google leading the charge from 2000 up until the COVID-19 pandemic. But Google was hardly the only—or even the first—technology-related prankster. We look at the top 4 in this edition of Tech Time Warp:
The BBC’s “Spaghetti Tree” (1957)
In 1957, in the early days of TV, the BBC’s Panorama aired what proved to be a controversial segment on the “bumper spaghetti crop” in Lake Lugano, Switzerland. Some viewers felt it was beneath the news program to engage in such baloney (Bolognese?), but others fell for it and contacted the BBC about acquiring their own spaghetti trees. Lucky for us, the BBC still offers the video on its website.
DIY Color TV (1962)
On April Fools’ Day 1962, Sweden’s Sveriges Television aired a segment in which an expert explained how to stretch nylon in front of a screen to “bend light’s wavelengths” and create a color image. Of course, the most readily available source of nylon at that time was … stockings. Thousands were soon out a pair.
The MacKnifer (1985)
The clever folks at Byte magazine published the 1985 announcement of the “MacKnifer”—a knife-sharpening hardware attachment for computers. “Turn your spare computing time into extra cash with a knife-sharpening business on the side … of your Macintosh.”
SB #040194 (1994)
PC Computing magazine had its own fun in 1994, when John Dvorak reported on federal legislation that would prohibit use of the “Information Highway” while drunk, with a rider also banning discussion of “sexual matters on any public-access network, including the Internet, America Online, and CompuServe.” A few clues existed that this was a hoax: The bill number was “040194,” or 04/01/94, and the Senate aide listed as a contact was “Lirpa Sloof.” Read that backwards.
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