antedate hacker (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Shapiro, Fred]

In 2003 I posted to this list serve a 1963 citation for _hacker_ that, although not precisely in a computing context, is obviously the same term:

1963 _The Tech_ (MIT student newspaper) 20 Nov. 1  Many telephone services
have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof.
Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. ... The
hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines
between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to
a local radar installation.  One method involved connecting the PDP-1
computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone,
indicating an outside line, was found. ... Because of the "hacking," the
majority of the MIT phones are "trapped."

Fred Shapiro



________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Mullins, Bill AMRDEC [Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL]
Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2010 5:07 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: antedate hacker (UNCLASSIFIED)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

Someone has transcribed an interesting _Rolling Stone_ article, that may
offer some hacker/computer antedates:

http://wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html

There are some obvious typos, so any use of this should be checked
against hard copy.  Or the entire magazine has been digitized and is
available on CD-ROM (for only $25 or so at the local Barnes & Noble).

[All cites in this post are from the above article]

OED has two computer-related senses for hacker (n) -- 1976 and 1983.

"Spacewar" by Stewart Brand.  _Rolling Stone_ Dec 7 1972 (p# unknown).
"The hackers are the technicians of this science - "It's a term of
derision and also the ultimate compliment." They are the ones who
translate human demands into code that the machines can understand and
act on."

OED has hack (n) 7.a. 1983
[same article]
"Meanwhile, your photographer Annie, was tugged all over the lab to see
the hand-eye rig, the number half-tone printer, various spectacular
geometric display hacks, computer music programs, the color video image
maker"
[note: this word is probably related to, and probably has origins in,
the MIT student term "hack" meaning "an elegant solution to a technical
problem"]

up in the sense of a computer system being "up" (online, available for
work) goes back to 1547 in the OED (adv2 13.b.), but the first computer
related cite in this sense is 1978.

"His major project has been getting the ARPA Network up. ("Up" around
computers means working, the opposite of "down" or crashed.) "
[the corresponding sense of "down" goes back to 1965 in the OED (down
adv 17.b.), so this sense of "up" can likely be antedated still
further.]

"Net" as a network is back to 1970 in the OED (n1 7.)  Another early
cite:
"At present some 20 major computer centers are linked on the
two-year-old ARPA Net. Traffic on the Net has been very slow, due to
delays and difficulties of translation between different computers and
divergent projects. "

This article also makes eerily accurate predictions of the
decline/demise of print newspapers and record stores.
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

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