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The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [1] Historically, it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America. [2] Formed in 1946, its HO scale layout specializes in the automated operation of model trains.
The first meeting of the Tech Model Railroad Club was organized by John Fitzallen Moore and Walter Marvin in November of 1946. [3] Moore and Marvin had membership cards #0 and #1 and served as the first president and vice-president respectively. They then switched roles the following year.
Circa 1948, the club obtained official MIT campus space in Room 20E-214, on the third floor of Building 20, a "temporary" World War II-era structure, sometimes called "the Plywood Palace", [4] which had been home to the MIT Radiation Lab during World War II.
The club's members, who shared a passion to find out how things worked and then to master them, were among the first hackers. [2] Some of the key early members of the club were Jack Dennis and Peter Samson, who compiled the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language [5] and who are credited with originating the concept "Information wants to be free". [6] The atmosphere was casual; members disliked authority. [7] Members received a key to the room after logging 40 hours of work on the layout. [8]
The club was composed of several groups, including those who were interested in building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional values, those that wanted to do scenery and buildings, those that wanted to run trains on schedules, and those composing the "Signals and Power Subcommittee" who created the circuits that made the trains run. This last group would be among the ones who popularized the term "hacker" among many other slang terms and who eventually moved on to computers and programming. They were initially drawn to the IBM 704, the multimillion-dollar mainframe that was operated in Building 26, but access to and time on the mainframe was restricted to more important people. The group really became intensively involved with computers when Jack Dennis, a former member who had by then joined the MIT Electrical Engineering faculty, introduced them to the TX-0, a $3,000,000 computer on long-term loan from Lincoln Laboratory. [8]
At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by the mid-1950s. It was called the ARRC (Automatic Railroad Running Computer). It could run a train over the entire set of track, in both directions without manual intervention, throwing switches and powering tracks ahead of the train. A mainframe program was used to compute the path, and all modifications to the layout had to be compatible with this ability. It was sometimes used to clean the tracks with a track scraper car. Sometime around 1964, this was replaced by a second system built around the Number 5 Crossbar telephone switch; the lead designer for this project was Alan Kotok, a prominent member of the design staff at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Equipment for this effort was donated by the telephone company via the Western Electric College Gift Plan. An extension to the basic control system allowed TMRC engineers to control switches on the layout. There was also a digital clock display with relay switching, and an internal telephone system with external tie-lines, all built from telephone stepping switches and relays.[ citation needed ]
The system of telephones was used for voice communication, for control of the clock, as well as for control of switches and blocks. Additionally, "j trains" (imaginary trains) could be run by plugs in the control system.[ further explanation needed ]
Around 1970, Digital Equipment Corporation donated two small rackmount PDP-11 minicomputers. One was eventually used to operate the club's major freight yard, and the other was set up to perform user interface tasks, such as the initial assignment of trains to throttles,and to throw turnouts. The computer replaced the keypad unit from an old keypunch machine, which had been originally installed by Richard Greenblatt.[ citation needed ]
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The TMRC spawned a unique vocabulary. Compiled in the TMRC Dictionary, [5] it included terms that later became part of the hacker's Jargon File, such as "foo", "mung", and "frob". Other substitutions include "orifice" for office (as in later Back Orifice), "cruft" for garbage, and "hack", meaning an elaborate college prank carried out by MIT students. This last definition is the basis for the term "hacker".[ citation needed ]
By 1962, the TMRC layout was already a complex electromechanical system, controlled by about 1200 relays. There were scram switches located at numerous places around the room that could be pressed to shut down all movement on the tracks if something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going full speed toward an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a relay-logic digital clock (dubbed the "digital crock") on the dispatch board, which was itself something of a wonder in the days before cheap LEDs and seven-segment displays. When someone hits a scram switch, the clock stops and the time display is replaced with the word "FOO". At TMRC, the scram switches are therefore called "foo switches".[ citation needed ]
The layout is set in the 1950s, when railroads operated steam and diesel-electric engines side by side. This allows visitors to run a wide variety of model rolling stock without looking too anachronistic.
In his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution , Steven Levy gives a detailed account of those early years. TMRC's "Signals and Power Subcommittee" liked to work on the layout's relays, switches, and wires, while the "Midnight Requisitioning Committee" obtained parts independently of campus procurement rules. The Signals and Power Subcommittee included most of the early TX-0 and PDP-1 computer hackers, and several people would later join the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. TMRC was even offered its own multi-rack-cabinet PDP-1 by 1965, although it had no space in which to install it and thus was forced to decline the gift.[ citation needed ]
MIT's Building 20, TMRC's home for 50 years, was slowly evacuated in 1996–98 and demolished in 1999 to make room for the Ray and Maria Stata Center. The club was offered a new space in Building N52, the MIT Museum building. Most of the original layout could not be moved and was demolished. Construction of a new layout began immediately and still continues. The vintage telephone crossbar relay-based control system was moved into the new space and operated for two years but, as the new layout grew, the decision was made to replace it with an electronic equivalent. Known as "System 3", this new system comprises around 40 PIC16F877 microcontrollers under the command of a Linux computer.
An unusual feature of the new layout is an HO scale model of the Green Building, an 18-story building which is the tallest structure in the academic core of the MIT campus. The model is wired with an array of incandescent window lights, which can be used as a display for playing Tetris, and was a precursor to the project to do this with the actual building. [9] Passersby inside Building N52 can view the model through a window and play a monochromatic version of Tetris via remote control, accompanied by authentic-sounding music, even when the facility is closed. [10] In 2011, an independent group of hackers reified this "holy grail" of hacking by installing and operating a full-sized color version of Tetris on the 295-foot (90 m) tall Green Building tower. [11] [12] [13]
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As of April 2015 [update] , TMRC holds a semi-annual Open House, inviting the MIT community and the general public to visit. [14] At other times, visitors are generally welcome when members are present. [15]
The terms foobar, foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, and others are used as metasyntactic variables and placeholder names in computer programming or computer-related documentation. They have been used to name entities such as variables, functions, and commands whose exact identity is unimportant and serve only to demonstrate a concept. The style guide for Google developer documentation recommends against using them as example project names because they are unclear and can cause confusion.
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone with knowledge of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them. In a positive connotation, though, hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online and pose as criminals. Likewise, covert world agencies can employ hacking techniques in the legal conduct of their work. Hacking and cyber-attacks are used extra-legally and illegally by law enforcement and security agencies, and employed by state actors as a weapon of legal and illegal warfare.
The PDP-1 is the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1959. It is famous for being the most important computer in the creation of hacker culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bolt, Beranek and Newman and elsewhere. The PDP-1 is the original hardware for playing history's first game on a minicomputer, Steve Russell's Spacewar!
The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy—often in collective effort—the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware, to achieve novel and clever outcomes. The act of engaging in activities in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed hacking. However, the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves, but how it is done and whether it is exciting and meaningful. Activities of playful cleverness can be said to have "hack value" and therefore the term "hacks" came about, with early examples including pranks at MIT done by students to demonstrate their technical aptitude and cleverness. The hacker culture originally emerged in academia in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Hacking originally involved entering restricted areas in a clever way without causing any major damage. Some famous hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were placing of a campus police cruiser on the roof of the Great Dome and converting the Great Dome into R2-D2.
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (ISBN 0-385-19195-2) is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Doubleday. Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker culture and the Hacker Ethic, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT, to the self-made hardware hackers and game hackers.
Richard D. Greenblatt is an American computer programmer. Along with Bill Gosper, he may be considered to have founded the hacker community, and holds a place of distinction in the communities of the programming language Lisp and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Cruft is a jargon word for anything that is left over, redundant and getting in the way. It is used particularly for defective, superseded, useless, superfluous, or dysfunctional elements in computer software.
Stephen Russell, also nicknamed "Slug", is an American computer scientist most famous for creating Spacewar!, well known for being the first widely distributed video game.
Jack Bonnell Dennis is an American computer scientist and Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Cecil and Ida Green Building, also called the Green Building or Building 54, is an academic and research building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The building houses the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). It is one of the tallest buildings in Cambridge.
Stewart Nelson is an American mathematician and programmer from The Bronx who co-founded Systems Concepts.
Alan Kotok was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, describes Kotok and his classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first true hackers.
Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After its initial creation, Spacewar! was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards and Peter Samson. It was also spread to many of the few dozen installations of the PDP-1 computer, making Spacewar! the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations.
Peter R. Samson is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software for the TX-0 and PDP-1.
Expensive Desk Calculator by Robert A. Wagner is thought to be computing's first interactive calculation program.
Expensive Tape Recorder is a digital audio program written by David Gross while a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gross developed the idea with Alan Kotok, a fellow member of the Tech Model Railroad Club. The recorder and playback system ran in the late 1950s or early 1960s on MIT's TX-0 computer on loan from Lincoln Laboratory.
Harmony Compiler was written by Peter Samson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The compiler was designed to encode music for the PDP-1 and built on an earlier program Samson wrote for the TX-0 computer.
T-Square is an early drafting program written by Peter Samson assisted by Alan Kotok and possibly Robert A. Saunders while they were students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and members of the Tech Model Railroad Club.
The Jargon File is a glossary and usage dictionary of slang used by computer programmers. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab (SAIL) and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), Carnegie Mellon University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It was published in paperback form in 1983 as The Hacker's Dictionary, revised in 1991 as The New Hacker's Dictionary.
Robert Alan Saunders was an American computer scientist, most famous for his involvement with Spacewar. Saunders joined the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) led by Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, and himself. They then met Marvin Minsky and other influential pioneers in what was then known as Artificial Intelligence.
{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)3. All information should be free... Number three, which dates back to 1959, is originally credited to Peter Samson [of TMRC]