The Computer Corner
Still searching for Easter eggs
By Charles Miller

Every spring brings the customary Easter egg hunt to many towns in the western world. But “Easter egg” has come to have a meaning beyond the brightly colored eggs hidden in the shrubbery.

The term is now broadly applied to a message or feature that is hidden in computer software, movies, and other works.

Artists have been hiding messages in their work for centuries. At the fifteenth-century Vatican, when Biagio da Cesena criticized the nudity in Michaelangelo’s Last Judgement, he found himself unflatteringly caricatured as one of the demons in Hades. The muralist Diego Rivera included portraits of himself in his murals. Film director Alfred Hitchcock included a cameo appearance in each of his movies. 

The practice continues in the computer age, as programmers include various messages, graphics, sound effects, or undocumented features in their programs. Such surprises usually reveal themselves in response to some unusual set of commands, mouse clicks or keystrokes. 


Such Easter eggs can take various forms, including lists of the developers’ names, political statements, music or images. Two of the most famous Easter eggs in the 1997 version of Microsoft Office were a hidden flight simulator game in Microsoft Excel and a hidden pinball game in Microsoft Word. 

If you want to see an example of an Easter egg on your Windows XP computer, start playing a game of Solitaire. When you are ready to win the game, simultaneously press and hold the [Alt], [Shift] and number [2] keys and watch what happens. 

If you have a Palm Pilot, the Palm operating system includes several colorful Easter eggs. Mac OS X operating systems feature a sound test file “audiotest.au” that says “This is a test. It is only a test.” But in some releases the file plays the opening theme music from Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

Easter eggs are inserted into computer hardware, too. Some Apple Macintosh models include a picture of the development team in one of the chips on the motherboard. One version of AMI BIOS used in many PCs in 1993 would play “Happy Birthday” via the PC speaker on November 13. 

The most incredible hardware Easter egg was built into the Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 5P scanner. If the scanner were turned on while holding down the [Scan] button, the stepping motor varied its speed to play “Ode to Joy” or “Für Elise.” 

Easter eggs are also found on movie DVDs. Some, but not all, opening menus respond to an extra click to the right or left. Going up in the menu instead of going down may reveal a hidden feature such as outtakes or deleted scenes. 

It is a sign of the times that Easter eggs are being seen less and less in the computer world. For security reasons, many companies and government offices now require that the software they buy not contain any undocumented features, regardless of how innocent; this means no more Easter eggs. For this reason, many developers no longer permit their programmers to include Easter eggs in their work. 

Fortunately for those who still have a sense of humor, there are many websites devoted to Easter eggs. A Google search will take you straight to sites such as eeggs.com, where several new Easter eggs were discovered last week, and hundreds more wait to be revealed.


Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044 (415) 101-8528, or email questions from SMAguru.com.