Where Did Easter Eggs Come From?

Easter is almost here, and lots of children (and more than a few adults) will be occupied with the search for chocolate Easter eggs. But what about Easter eggs of the non-chocolate, computer variety? Finding those can be a bit trickier (and equally rewarding and, as an added bonus, calorie free).

The first (and I think only) electronic Easter egg that I discovered all on my own was in QuarkXPress. While playing around with a just updated version, I wanted to see if the command-k function (that I liked to call super delete, but others referred to as the kill command) had been revised. In the past, deletions of certain combinations of elements could not be undone, and I wanted to see if this feature had been fixed in the update. When I happened upon the combination of command-shift-option-k, out came a little alien to blast my text box into oblivion. It was very cool. I later found out the alien was named Marvin. If you made Marvin appear five times in a row, another larger alien would appear and blast Marvin to smithereens—which I always thought was just a mean thing to do.

So, who made the first computer Easter egg? Where did it come from? And why? As this video explains, the first electronic Easter egg was actually a very clever way for a game designer to secretly sign his work. And that seems to me to be a pretty good reason to create an electronic Easter egg. I would assume, Marvin would agree.