1954 Internet Myth Busted

From time to time I get an email or a comment on this blog asking to confirm if an Internet myth is true. In fact, a couple weeks ago I received a MySpace bulletin that said if you lock your keys in your car, and you have remote access that you can call your wife and have her hold her remote up to the phone and press the unlock button while you hold your phone up to the car.

Obviously that does not work, but it was plausible enough to get pushed around the Internet from inbox to inbox for years now.

There is another Internet myth that some of you may have heard of. reportedly there was a Popular Mechanics article in 1954 that portrayed what a home computer would look like in 2004. The picture, show below, was complete with a steering wheel, a black and white television, and a wall-full of bells and whistles.

This image has been floating around the Internet for years now, and it is actually a hoax. The image was originally taken from the Smithsonian Cold War Submarine Exhibit and was manipulated to add home computer elements. The altered image was obviously never published in Popular Mechanics.

If you have forwarded that image to someone and believed it was real, you have been taken by an Internet myth. This one is probably not explosive enough to make it onto the Myth Busters TV program, but some Photoshop guru somewhere has been chuckling for years over this little prank.