A classic
MIT hack, probably one of the most widely known. The city of
Boston woke up one morning to see a
Campus Police car on top of the
Great Dome of MIT. When the Campus Police went to investigate, they discovered a
car painted to match one of their vehicles, complete with
lights flashing and siren wailing. The
license plate
read
IHTFP, and the car number was
pi. Inside,
there was a dummy dressed in a blue uniform and
octagonal hat, complete with a box of
donuts.
The car, assembled out of an automobile body on a wooden frame, can now be viewed in the MIT Museum Hall of Hacks. The donuts, however, have long since disappeared.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case; as of early 2001, the MIT Museum no longer has its hack display. Apparently the new curator is of the opinion that the museum should demonstrate MIT students' serious engineering ability, rather than silly pranks. There is, however, a reasonable amount of information on the police car hack at http://hacks.mit.edu.
Update: Parts of the MIT Museum's hack collection, including the police car, have been put on display in the first floor of the Stata Center.