
First Recorded Usage of “Hacker” (2008) - dang
https://manybutfinite.com/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/
======
dang
Some of the links have since rotted. Here's Fred Shapiro's email reporting the
discovery:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20051023131548/http://listserv.l...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051023131548/http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-
bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ads-l&P=R5831&m=24290)

And here's the (unrelated) "paper with a most hilarious and offensive name":

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080903094328/http://findarticl...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080903094328/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_go2573/is_200209/ai_n7467296)

There are also the Tech Model Railroad Club dictionaries of 1959 and 1960,
which include "hacker":

[http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/tmrc-dictionary-
intro.html](http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/tmrc-dictionary-intro.html)

Why does this not count as an earlier recorded usage? Is it because those
dates have not been independently verified?

~~~
dang
I emailed Fred Shapiro, the editor of the authoritative Yale Book of
Quotations, to ask him about the TMRC dictionaries. He replied:

" _I am familiar with the 1959 occurrence of "hacker," which has been
confirmed. The problem with it is not that it is unconfirmed, but rather that
it is a general usage not a computer usage. For that matter, the 1963 usage
that I discovered is also not specific to computers, although I believe that
phone-hacking is pretty much the same phenomenon as computer-hacking. The
earliest usage I am aware of that is specific to computers is dated 1968._

 _But the real issue here is whether "hacker" originally had malicious or
benign connotations. Since the general usage of "hacker" in MIT culture is
clearly the ancestor of the computer usage, as soon as the 1959 citation was
discovered I conceded that I was probably wrong about "hacker" originally
having malicious connotations._

 _Fred Shapiro, MIT Class of 1974_ "

------
herodotus
In the late 1960's, in Johannesburg, my friends and I discovered a "hack" for
payphones. In those days and at that place, people paid per-phone-call, so
finding a way to call for free was great for a bunch of crazy teen-agers. What
we discovered was that you could use a grounded wire to fool the phone company
into thinking a coin was dropped into the coin slot. When the recording said
"please deposit ..." we would scratch the wire to a metal part of the mouth
piece. (There was a small hole in the plastic of the mic for some reason -
that is what we used). The "ground" was the metal cage on the overhead light.
For some reason, the scratch produced simulated the signal of a coin drop.
Many silly school-boy prank calls ensued. I hang my head in shame.

------
archgoon
As dang points out in this thread, The Tech Model Railroad Club was formed in
1946[1]. The TMRC dictionary was first written in 1959.

[http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html](http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html)

The TMRC, which is generally cited as one of the origin points of MIT hacking
culture, defines the following terms:

    
    
      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 hack.
    
      HACKER: one who hacks, or makes them.
    

This predates the news article by 4 years.

Also, you can't be a 'so-called hacker' unless people are already using the
term.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Model_Railroad_Club)

~~~
dang
No doubt that's what 'so-called hacker' was meant to convey, but the issue in
later decades has been to look for _recorded_ usages.

Since Shapiro now agrees, it seems like the TMRC non-malicious usage of
"hacker" has won.

------
hyperpape
Within the realm of blackhat or malicious hacking, many people may also make a
distinction between cheating a corporation out of small amounts of money
(phone phreaking, cable boxes) and doing things that directly hurt private
individuals for the sake of profit. So even if the earliest uses of “hacking”
referred to something illegal, it might not really refer to the same thing as
blackhat hacking today.

------
vehemenz
In Boston's late 50s slang, a "hacker" was someone that tuned muscle cars/hot
rods. It's no surprise that the earliest written occurrence of "hacker", in
the modern sense, comes from Cambridge.

~~~
eesmith
A Google Books search for "hacker" pre-1963 (
[https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A...](https://www.google.com/search?q=hacker&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1950%2Ccd_max%3A1963&tbm=bks)
) shows that it was also used for taxi cab drivers, eg,
[https://books.google.com/books?id=puENBZpcOmoC&q=hacker&dq=h...](https://books.google.com/books?id=puENBZpcOmoC&q=hacker&dq=hacker)
.

~~~
teej
Woah, I knew illegal cab driving in Baltimore was called “hacking” but never
considered the term had old roots. Turns out it all comes from the use of
Hackney horses in the 19th century.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_taxicab_operation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_taxicab_operation)

------
ggm
I think we're going to see this pushed backward. An example of deep roots,
'bus' as in data bus, goes back to bus-bars which is electrical engineering
from the pre-WWII date. There were no data busses in the 1930s but bus-bar was
well understood.

For analogous reasons I therefore believe we'll see "hacker" roots going back
a lot further.

~~~
mirimir
Well, there are _hacksaws_.

> The journal quotes George N. Clemson as follows:

"In 1884 we built a sawing machine for testing hack saws, in which we
discovered that the blades we produced would cut twelve pieces of one-inch
iron before re-sharpening was necessary. During the year 1886 we experimented
with fifty-two kinds of hack saws."

And hack is an old German/Dutch word.

Maybe it's a stretch. But hacksaws are one of my favorite tools.

~~~
cmpb
Totally off-topic, but hacksaws are also a favorite tool of mine. There is
something totally fascinating to me about cutting through metal - likely
because metal is typically strong and difficult to break. I have very fond
memories of hacking things in my grandfather's shed when I was young, and to
this day I really enjoy hacking through a drywall nail when doing home
improvement tasks.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>fond memories of hacking things //

I think the phrase you're looking for is "sawing things". If you talk about
using a chain saw you don't "chain a tree", you still "saw a tree". Your usage
seems contrived.

~~~
cmpb
Hmm. I see your point, that it does seem like I was contriving to use the term
"hack" in a situation that might lend it to a (non-nefarious) precursor of the
"hacking" term in the topic at hand. But in this case it was actually
unintentional, and what I had in my head was more of "hacking things to
pieces" as a boy who's found his way into his grandfather's shed is likely to
do.

------
vorg
Both meanings can be expressed using a phrasal verb. To "hack into" something
has the blackhat meaning, whereas to "hack at" or "hack up" something has the
whitehat meaning. But to "hack" something, without the particle, only sounds
right in the blackhat sense, e.g. "the hack the NSA" or "the hack a website".
So I guess the noun "hacker" has the default sense someone who hacks into
things/places.

------
mistrial9
In 80s California, the word _hacker_ was very often "solving problems that are
technically hard, doing it fast or otherwise in an exceptional way, and no
concerns about legality" .. please recall that obvious crime like thieving, is
only one end of lots of other possibilities, such as disregarding egregious
and/or exaggerated legal claims by profit-oriented entities, copy protection,
right to alter a consumer product, right to discuss publicly, etc

~~~
Mister_X
Yes, I very much agree with your assessment of the word Hacker in that place,
around that time, I was there from '64-'92.

Previous to the negative connotations of the now common usage regarding
Hacking computers, I took my first High School electronics class in 1969 in
Sunnyvale, the word Hacker was already in use then.

Upon reflection though, it may be the word was used in the Ham Radio Community
first, because my instructor, Robert Thorson, was also a Ham Radio Operator,
and quite a cool cat.

As an arcane aside, my great Uncle, who like many of his generation (B. 1895),
was a Maker, and built things in his home workshop (yes, he had a ubiquitous
Shop Smith Multi-Tool and unlike most, he used the crap out of it).

When I was a child, about 1959 or '60, I asked him where he got a pull toy
that he let me play with, and he told me it was "just something I hacked
together out of scrap".

So he then had to explain to me what that meant, and he said it had to do with
making things out of other things, and it often involved a hacksaw.

I was so excited about learning that word (hacksaws are cool to 6 years olds!)
that I ran inside my Aunts house and told my parents.

It influenced me for life, and I've been hacking things together for decades
now, just not computer code.

I was saddened that the "popular press" poisoned the word, it was very
descriptive for what it was.

