When did the computer term 'hacker' come to be used?

by Lisa Brewster

People who are familiar with computers and other electronic devices and circuits, and who use the knowledge and technology to clear seemingly impossible problems, are called "hackers" and their actions are called "hacking". You Originally, " Hack " has the meaning of "roughly crush, cut in English" in English, and in slang is used in the meaning of "through out", but "" Hacker "has been used as a computer term since It seems that there are various theories about what happened?

First Recorded Usage of "Hacker" | Many But Finite
https://manybutfinite.com/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/

First Recorded Usage of “Hacker” (2008) | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19415484

For hacking, 2) “ White Hat hacking ”, which utilizes its advanced technology and knowledge for good purpose, and 2) “ Black Hat hacking, ” which commits a crime by illegally intruding into hardware or tampering with a program. There are varieties, but in recent years the latter is called " cracking " and it is clearly distinguished from hacking. Nevertheless, there is a criticism that the image of a crime is attached to the word "hacking" because "so many media organizations have used the word hacking in the meaning of cracking".

by Nate Grigg

Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Dictionary Of Quotations , used the word "hacker" for the first time near modern times at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published November 20, 1963. The following article was published in 2003 on The Tech , which is the internal newspaper of (MIT).

In the article, Carlton Tucker, the manager of the telephone system that connects MIT's research institutes, said, "MIT's telephone network is closed because of" hacking ". In addition, there is a joke subtitle subtitle "Tucker warns hackers", and the word "hacker" has already been used in the meaning of modern times at MIT at that time. It is shown.

This article is about phone hacking, and hacking at MIT was discovered by Harvard students in the early 1960s, and they can use DTMF signals to make free calls to anywhere in the world for free. thing. The episodes of Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak knowing this hacking method in high school and selling a device called "Blue Box" to make free calls during the 1970s are well known is.

Wads and Jobs Speaks About Phone Hacking Device "Blue Box" Leading to Apple Establishment-GIGAZINE

Shapiro thinks that the hackers appearing in The Tech are illegally accessing the telephone network and commiting free calls, so it is close to the meaning of modern-day crackers, so the word "hacker" is originally a negative meaning. Insisted that it was a word with.

However, in the commentary section of Hacker News introducing this article, the opinion that " Hhacker 's first appearance was not the 1963 The Tech but a 1959 Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) dictionary ?" Was proposed. The TMRC is a model of the railway model association at MIT. Peter R. Samson, who was at TMRC at the time, said he had created a personal dictionary for members of TMRC. Samson publishes all of it on his home page, but it certainly includes commentary on "hacking" and "hacker" in it.

In the dictionary of TMRC in the first edition of 1959, the meaning of “hacking” is “1: An article or project without a constructive purpose. : Create or try to create. " In addition, Samson recognized that in this article, the word "Hack" represents "an application of an unconventional technology that would otherwise not be recommended for engineering reasons." At the time of writing, it was annotated that some "good hacking" was seen. "

A Hacker News user who found it sent an email about the TMRC dictionary to Shapiro who found the example of The Tech, who admitted that he had already understood the use of the TMRC dictionary. Above, "Answers explained in this dictionary is general, not a modern computer-limited meaning". However, he admitted that it was a mistake about the claim that "hacking" originally had the meaning of a crack.

Another user claims that "in Boston in the late 1950s, people who customized cars in the hot rod style were called" hackers "by slang," but there is no solid evidence for this. , The truth is unknown.

by Christopher Allison Photography

Also, in Hacker News's comment section, "The bus used in computer terms (bus) is derived from the busbars used in electrical engineering before the war, so the word source of hacks could be traced back to the prewar days too" Some users have cast their expectations.