Soon S&P
committee members proudly referred to the entire
activity of improving and reshaping the track's
underlying circuitry as "hacking" and to the people who
did it as "hackers."
Given their affinity for sophisticated electronics-not
to mention the traditional MIT-student disregard for
closed doors and "No Trespassing" signs-it didn't take
long before the hackers caught wind of a new machine on
campus. Dubbed the TX-0, the machine was one of the
first commercially marketed computers. By the end of
the 1950s, the entire S&P clique had migrated en masse
over to the TX-0 control room, bringing the spirit of
creative play with them. The wide-open realm of
computer programming would encourage yet another
mutation in etymology. "To hack" no longer meant
soldering unusual looking circuits, but cobbling
together software programs with little regard to
"official" methods or software-writing procedures. It
also meant improving the efficiency and speed of
already-existing programs that tended to hog up machine
resources.
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