

First Recorded Usage of "Hacker" (2008) - falava
http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/

======
jt2190
What about the 1959 TMRC Dictionary? [1]

    
    
      > HACKER: one who hacks, or makes them.
      > A hacker avoids the standard solution. The hack is 
      > the basic concept; the hacker is defined in terms of it.
    

(edit: The article claims that the 1963 usage was the "first", however on
reading the linked listserv.linguist.org posting by Fred Shapiro, it appears
that it's the first citation that uses "hacker" with negative connotations.)

[1]
[http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html](http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html)
[2] [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-
bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ad...](http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-
bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ads-l&P=R5831&1=ads-l&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4)

~~~
gustavo_duarte
Here's what Shapiro says:

"The word "hacker" _in its well-known computing sense_ has a first citation of
1971 (contributed by me) in the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. Here
is an earlier citation, _not precisely in a computing context_ but obviously
the same term"

I interpret that as the only condition on the citation being "the well-known
computing sense." He's definitely not saying "with negative connotations."

Even the phreaking stuff from the Tech is "not precisely in a computing
context". I don't think the TMRC citation qualifies here, it's a very specific
and different context (check some of its sibling entries), even if it shares
some of that early magical MIT spirit.

But even then, the TMRC does also say:

"HACK: 1) something done without constructive end"

So, all in all, even taking the TMRC into account I think the origin of the
word was already ambiguous, _which it is_. I think the small dash of
mischievousness adds to the flavor of hacking.

------
aculver
Growing up before the Internet was broadly available, the telephone network
had a real magic to it and exploring it was really kind of addictive. These
days most of us take communication completely for granted and are constantly
communicating with people all over the world via SMS, IM, email, etc. often
with no thought for how amazing it really is.

I read Exploding The Phone[1] last summer and I couldn't put it down. The
first couple chapters are great for putting in perspective how amazing and
novel this new network was to people vs. the way they communicated before. The
rest of the book catalogs some great profiles of different (and some pretty
famous) people who were drawn to tinkering with the system for various
reasons. Some are outright criminals and some of them are like many of those
in the HN crowd, just without such overwhelmingly accessible general
computing, networking, and open-source software to build with.

I grew up just on the tail end of any sort of telephone hacking and
exploration that was still going on and watched as BBSes were eventually made
obsolete by the Internet. Reading the book was a really nostalgic experience
and put me in touch with a lot of great memories while also allowing me to be
thankful for the new opportunities to tinker and hack that are available to us
these days, really at a much higher level.

[1] [http://explodingthephone.com](http://explodingthephone.com)

------
gdubs
Steven Levy's "Hackers" [1] is a great book, which begins at MIT at the middle
of the last century, with the kids who loved model trains, and going out and
messing with traffic lights around Boston.

1:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)

------
SixSigma
The Origins of The Hacking Jacket

[http://www.ahume.co.uk/blog/index.php/the-origins-of-the-
hac...](http://www.ahume.co.uk/blog/index.php/the-origins-of-the-hacking-
jacket/)

------
NickSharp
Is that MIT article real? It's almost too good to be true.

~~~
finin
You can see a scanned version of The Tech from November 20, 1963 in the
paper's archives at
[http://tech.mit.edu/V83/PDF/V83-N24.pdf](http://tech.mit.edu/V83/PDF/V83-N24.pdf).

