Never air your dirty laundry in public, and always respect a patriotic washing machine.
It was in 2020 during the extreme boredom of the Covid lockdown that I discovered my washing machine’s dirty little secret.
After a few pushes of the buttons a Fisher & Paykel washing machine could play God Defend New Zealand.
I’m lucky I had a Fisher & Paykel washing machine nearby, as this blew out my mind. I then had to rinse and repeat after discovering my patriotic machine also played two other national anthems, Advance Australia Fair and The Star Spangled Banner.
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And this isn’t all, this innocent looking piece of whiteware is a veritable jukebox.
In the 1990s, at a time when grunge was huge and an American president innocently played with his saxophone, something interesting was going down at Fisher & Paykel, faster than The Last Action Hero at the box office.
The company was grappling with one of the world’s great puzzles, how to get customers to interact with machines on display in retail stores.
Hamish McNeilly/Stuff
An evocative file photo of my Fisher and Paykel washing machine. It has been cleaned since this photo was taken. Maybe.
I don’t know anything about engineering or retail, but from a personal experience the only interaction I have when shopping for washing machines was to lift the lid, and stare at the price.
Perhaps aimed at shoppers like myself, the team at Fisher & Paykel decided to programme the national anthems of their home markets of New Zealand and Australia.
They were selected, Neil Cheyne, Fisher & Paykel reliability and compliance general manager, said: ‘‘in recognition of the company’s history and legacy, along with America’s Star Spangled Banner”.
But the story of the anthem playing machines unfolded before that, and coincided with ‘‘the emergence of our SmartDrive technology’’.
‘’The SmartDrive programs which powered the motor were coded onto non-rewritable chips, with limited storage.’’
This is where it gets interesting.
One of the engineers involved in the SmartDrive project noticed that the software didn’t quite fill the capacity of the chip.
Hamish McNeilly/Stuff
Hacking the mainframe of my Fisher and Paykel washing machine led me on a journey of discovery.
So what did this unnamed Kiwi legend do?
Well, that person decided to surprise their team by programming a popular movie theme song into the code, Cheyne said.
But this unnamed theme (gah!) remains buried deep within the software, ‘‘dormant and inaccessible to the user’’, Cheyne said. Double gah!
I was picking the movie theme song Jaws, but maybe that would scare people when trying to locate that missing sock at the bottom of their washing machine.
That coded Easter egg was touched on briefly in a 2013 Stuff story, which said: ‘’The washing machines could also play two theme songs from 1980s science fiction movies if there was a power surge’’.
So Jaws is dead in the water. Close Encounters? No, that close encounter was in 1977. Ghostbusters? Well, who you going to call on this topic?
It has to be Star Wars right?? Despite the film first screening in 1977, Empire Strikes Back came out in 1980, and then Return of the Jedi three years later. So that qualifies, not that the company is confirming.
So that unnamed engineer’s slice of Kiwi ingenuity led to led Fisher & Paykel revisiting the idea, and is why my machine has three programmable national anthems, and quite possible two hidden sci-fi classic from 80s movies.
Meanwhile, my washing machine turned jukebox was also suspiciously quiet on the subject, despite my forlorn attempt at hacking its mainframe.
But I am grateful that unlike some machines, according to one Reddit thread, my machine does not have the ability to play Crazy Frog by Axle F as it may predate the worst known song in human history.
If you know more about the hidden tunes, I’d love to hear from you. Please email me at hamish.mcneilly@stuff.co.nz
And if you want to play God Defend New Zealand, put your machine in demo mode by holding down "power" and the "advance" buttons together. It will soon light-up like a Christmas tree.
You should then hold "wash temp up" for two seconds, and please remain standing.
The Link LonkJuly 30, 2023 at 09:00AM
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMicmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnN0dWZmLmNvLm56L2xpZmUtc3R5bGUvaG9tZWQvbGl2aW5nLzMwMDkzNzA0Mi95b3VyLXBhdHJpb3RpYy13YXNoaW5nLW1hY2hpbmVzLXN1cnByaXNpbmctbGl0dGxlLXNlY3JldNIBAA?oc=5
Your patriotic washing machine's surprising little secret - Stuff
https://news.google.com/search?q=little&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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