hacker (antedating Tech Model Railroad Club of MIT - TMRC Dictionary 1959) (Should be checked in original document)

Wed Jul 28 23:56:39 UTC 2010

  MIT has long had a particular "hacker" subculture that predates any
computer usage. The computer-related term may or may not have been
derived from it (one would imagine MIT had access to early computers and
was responsible for a large share of early hacks--or, at least, a large
number of free-lancing hackers attended MIT at some point in their
hacking careers). This is the reason for the 1959-60 association with
MIT (including an appearance in The Tech).

I took me only a couple of minutes to find another early appearance of
"Hacker", although this one was a nickname attached to the name of one
of the deans (or a person named Dean--what are the odds that a player on
the Administration basketball team would be named Dean?).

The Tech, vol. 78:9. March 11, 1958
Basket-Brawl Game Planned For Faculty Early This Spring. p. 6/1
> Last year's game, won by the Science-Administration five, featured
> such Tech notables as "Easy Uno" Ingard, Dean "White Bucks" Speer,
> Nicholas "Iron Man" Grant, Dean William "Hacker" Holden, "Rocky
> Stocky" Stockmayer, Mal "Waban Wrecker" Kispert, Joseph "Bonus Baby"
> Synder, Charles "Killer" Miller, Rog "Prouncer" Prouty, and John "The
> Stilt" Murphy. The officials included President Killian, Deans Rule
> and Fassett, Dr. Stratton and Dean Thresher.

"Hacking" actually has multiple meanings on campus (none involving
chopping off limbs). I doubt the nickname would have been given
randomly--it should be possible to antedate this further by focusing on
MIT literature from the post-war years to 1960. Unfortunately, The Tech
archives are supremely disorganized and preclude an easy systematic search.

Oh, yes, the link!! It's a PDF file.

http://tech.mit.edu/V78/PDF/N9.pdf

There is no doubt as to the authenticity--the title page displays the
date, as do all other pages.

     VS-)

     VS-)

On 7/28/2010 6:06 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>> Just for the record, I have photocopies of the 1959 and 1960
>> editions of the TMRC dictionary, and the text given by Peter
>> Sampson as cited below is accurate
> Great!
>
> Reading the definitions given in the OED (1989) I now see that the
> TMRC Dictionary is not an antedating for the precise senses given in
> definitions 3.a and 3 b of the word hacker. Both definitions involve
> computers:
>
>    3. a. A person with an enthusiasm for programming or using computers
> as an end in itself. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
> First cite 1976.
>   3. b. A person who uses his skill with computers to try to gain
> unauthorized access to computer files or networks. colloq.
> First cite 1983.
>
> But the OED may wish to craft more general definitions for hacker or
> incorporate the information about the citations in some other way.
> Garson
>
> .. Continuing message from Jesse Sheidlower
>> Also, the annotations that
>> Garson refers to as "added later" are indeed modern ones, from
>> September 2005. The only available copy of the 1960 edition of
>> the dictionary does have some pencilled annotations.
>>
>> Jesse Sheidlower
>> OED
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 05:33:27PM -0400, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>>> Thanks to Bill Mullins for pointing out the Rolling Stone and to Fred
>>> Shapiro for pointing to The Tech article. Here is an early cite from
>>> the world of model railroads at MIT. This subculture was contiguous
>>> with the later computer subculture at MIT according to several
>>> references: (This information is from an online repository and should
>>> be checked on paper I think)
>>>
>>> TMRC is the Tech Model Railroad Club of MIT
>>> http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/tmrc-dictionary-intro.html
>>>
>>> Annotated First Edition of the TMRC Dictionary (1959)
>>> http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html
>>>
>>> HACK: 1) something done without constructive end; 2) a project under-
>>>
>>>             taken on bad self-advice; 3) an entropy booster; 4) to produce,
>>>
>>>             or attempt to produce, a hack3.
>>>
>>> [Annotation added later I think: I saw this as a term for an
>>> unconventional or unorthodox application of technology, typically
>>> deprecated for engineering reasons. There was no specific suggestion
>>> of malicious intent (or of benevolence, either). Indeed, the era of
>>> this dictionary saw some "good hacks:" using a room-sized computer to
>>> play music, for instance; or, some would say, writing the dictionary
>>> itself.]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> HACKER: one who hacks, or makes them.
>>>
>>> [Annotation added later I think: A hacker avoids the standard
>>> solution. The hack is the basic concept; the hacker is defined in
>>> terms of it.]
>>>
>>> Garson
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 5:07 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC
>>> <Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil>  wrote:
>>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC"<Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
>>>> 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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>>>>
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