The information posted that John McCain (rhymes with “train”) might actually be a model railroader led me on a quest. I didn’t find any information about the Senator, but I did find a bit more on the origins of the word “Hacker.” A month or two ago, while discussing aspects of the culture of those who used computers for good and evil, I mentioned that the word was in common use at MIT in the 1960’s.
and similar ones indicate that not only were the very earliest “hackers” at MIT, they were active model railroaders, and the phrase actually came out of that club. (Yeah, I knew Pete Samson, one of the key characters in the subculture. Not from trains, but rather from the radio station, WTBS, whose call letters at the time were owned by MIT. And yeah, Ted Turner payed dearly for those letters.)
Anyway, back in the dark days of World War II, we needed something to pick up enemy aircraft coming in over the water. One of the places where this problem was studied was a bunch of crappy, temporary buildings at MIT known as Building 20. From these ramshackle wood-frame structures came an invention known as Radar. The war won, we settled back into the Transition Era, my father came home from his station in Africa, and I was born and raised.
And, what did I find when I got to MIT in 1965? Right, Building 20. You see, in New England, a “temporary” building is anything that’s been around for less than a hundred, maybe two hundred, years. We build to stay up here, or else it won’t last more than one of our winters or two. And every building needs…(drumroll and fanfare, please)…a basement. Yes, the Tech Model Railroa
You tell an interesting story, Mr Beasley, but it’s a bit of stretch to claim that radar was “invented” by MIT in Building 20. Sorry to nit-pick, but I think that Huelsmeyer, the US Naval Research Laboratory, the US Army Signal Corps, CSF, GEMA, Dumont, Arnold Wilkins, Robert Watson-Watt and quite a few others can all claim precedence in the field of radar.
I helped restore a WW2 RAAF mobile fighter control radar set when I was an apprentice, and I became fascinated by the history of radar.
Yeah, the “invention” of radar was one of those great collaborative efforts that just don’t happen anymore. There were critical contributions from all parts of the Allied world, because it was more important to get the job done and win the war than it was to claim credit, glory and patent rights on this stuff.
The “hackers” that built this stuff weren’t just in the US of A. Sorry for any misrepresentation of the facts. It was the kind of team thing that we only seem to be able to come up with in times of great crisis. Imagine what we could accomplish if we could all work like this all the time.
The MIT thing just goes to show, computers and trains are naturals together!
As for the initial quest, I seriously doubt Senator McCain is a model railroader. I will leave it at that, any furhter discussion would probably be construed as political. You can look it up yourself and probably figure out why I say this.
Actually the title to this thread should be “An old perspective” because hacking is an old term that many of us knew the origins of long before the current crop of teen age script kiddies.
Yes, we’ve already established that isn’t the case - but as MisterBeasley quite rightly pointed out, the development and refinement of radar was a collaborative effort, in which MIT played an important part.