As a child, I was travelling by car with my younger cousin. He asked me why there was a flashing red light on top of the radio tower. I told him that was so the radio waves could find the tower at night. Of course, he believed me.

Joe Y.

I was told by my grandma that there were things called wim-wams which were used for winding the sun up and down and which were kept on the side of the road just for that purpose. I've realised (only recently) that a wim-wam turned up every time Grandma saw a piece of farm machinery she didn't recognise. I expect there's a lot more of them now.

rosy

When I was 6 years old I wanted to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs so I wrote it on the side of a video tape, put it in the VCR and pressed record thinking this was going to work. It didn't.

Kris Curtis

One day my dad was making me and my younger sister breakfast, when we were very young. We asked him how the toaster worked, and our dad (i suspect now rather than admitting he didnt KNOW how the toaster worked, being a drama teacher and not a scientist) told us that a little man lived inside the toaster. His name was Mr. Frosty, and he had a special trident with a red-hot tip to cook the bread. We got obsessed with Mr Frosty and every morning (mystifying our mum) the three of us (Dad, Me and sister) would look intently into the toaster and say a polite 'good morning' to mr Frosty. My sister and I also used to receive little letters on tiny scraps of pink paper from mr Frosty, thanking us for keeping him in business with all the toast we ate.

Mr Frosty

On certain three speed bicycles, the shifter is made by a company called Sturmey Archer. On a particularly long ride one time, my mother told me that Sturmey Archer was the name of the little man who lived inside the hub and changed the gears. He had very large ears, which made the clicking noise as you rode, and changed the gears by sticking his nose in and out of the hub. This last bit isn't too far off from how a three speed hub works (sans extremely small man), so she might have been actually trying to teach me something useful...

Michael Pendleton

In our old microwave, there was a square place where the light/heat came from (I guess it was the heat) that was really bright. Well I thought if I talked to it I could talk to people in Heaven. So whenever I heated something, I'd start talking to my deceased grandfather.

courtney

I saw a commercial for AOL when I was young, and I didn't understand what computers or Internet or anything like that were, right?

So I figured that you get a computer, and set it all up, and when the mailman outside puts your fliers and bills and letters in the mailbox, your computer would tell you that 'You've Got Mail!'.

Why didn't they make the phrase 'You Got E-Mail!'? At least then I wouldn't have been so confused ... ^_^;

Mallory Maloney

I used to believe computer viruses were same as biological viruses.I thought that is why computers were kept in air conditioned rooms to prevent them from being attacked by these ' viruses'.

Ashish krishna

I used to think I could make televisions or radios using household materials. I gathered napkins, pieces of wood, toothpicks, and other random objects, and set about arranging them and hoping for the best. I figured I just had to position them in SOME way and it would work.

Anon

We were told - in the mid 60s when the new 10 speed "English Racer" bikes came to America - that you had to perform some complicated 'back pedal' manuever to get it to shift. and that it was impossible to master unless you were British and an expert biker.

Monty

I used to believe that there were bees inside of vaccuum cleaners, and that's why they buzzd so much. I was terrified of them, believing that I could be sucked into the vaccuum cleaner with all of the bees.

Ike, Portland.

I started using computers at a relatively young age(mind you I'm only 13 or 14 at the moment), probably since I was 4 or 5. My brother had put a bunch of odd fonts on the PC, and there were ones named after people in the form of handwriting, so I was convinced that these people had done something wrong and were put into my PC to write for me for all eternity.

Emily S.

i used to think that telephone poles stored energy in them and whenever someone was working on them it meant the pole had run empty and they were filling it back up.

eweb

I used to believe that calculators stopped time and we didn't notice in order to process math problems so fast.

Sailorlove90

When I was 7/8 (can't remember!) I went to my dad's office and saw his employee's paper shredder that had a reverse button on it (in case of a paper jam) and I said, out loud, "Oh, that's a good idea, so if you shred the wrong thing, you can have it restored!" OOPS! I was so embarrassed!

Anonny Boy

My dear old Grandmother has a little computer with which she only sends and receives emails. Every night, she places a blanket over the monitor to make sure the government can't see into her house.

Annie

When I was about 9 or 10, I heard about the Internet. I thought that when you bought things off the internet, you had a little box attached to your computer with a hole and you'd drop coins in the hole, and when you'd put in enough money, they'd send whatever you bought to you.

Sarah W

When I was three years old, my parents got me a Casio keyboard that had a variety of different instruments to choose from... leading me to believe that all music came from keyboards, and that violins, flutes, and the like didn't REALLY work (they didn't have any keys!)

Vince

I used to believe that there were millions of little hampsters on running wheels in order to supply us with electricity.
I think Saturday morning cartoons instilled this in me.

Erica

I used to believe that video tapes would have in them, whatever you write on the label so I wrote down all my favourite shows on videos at the time.

However, when I played them, they didn't work.

Athena