On 10 February 2012, aerospace engineering student Alan MacMasters attended a university lecture where the class was cautioned against using Wikipedia as a source, due to its reliability. The lecturer mentioned that you never know who could be the next inventor of the toaster on the Wikipedia page. Following the lecture, Alan and his friends edited the Wikipedia toaster article, replacing the articles name with Alan MacMasters', alleging he invented the toaster in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1893.
The actual inventor of the electric pop-up bread-toaster is Charles Strite in 1920,[1] who, working in Stillwater, Oklahoma, developed the appliance to ensure workers received evenly toasted bread.[2][3][4][5][6] Depending on the definition of a toaster, the electric heater patented by Frank E. Shailor in 1909[7] or the electric cooker by George J Schneider in 1905[8] can also be considered the first toaster; the former is however not a pop-up toaster and only toasts one side of the bread, and the latter makes no mention of bread in the patent.