/tmerk' / The Tech Model Railroad Club at
MIT, one of the wellsprings of
hacker culture. The 1959 "Dictionar
Y of the TMRC Language" compiled b
Y Peter Samson included several terms that became basics of the hackish vocabular
Y (see especiall
Y foo,
mung, and
frob). B
Y 1962, TMRC' s legendar
Y la
Yout was alread
Y a marvel of complexit
Y (and has grown in the thirt
Y Years since all the features described here are still present). The control s
Ystem alone featured about 1200 rela
Ys. There were {scram switch}es located at numerous places around the room that could be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature of the s
Ystem was a digital clock on the dispatch board, which was itself something of a wonder in those b
Ygone da
Ys before cheap LEDS and seven-segment displa
Ys. When someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the displa
Y was replaced with the word "FOO" at TMRC the scram switches are therefore called "foo switches". Steven Lev
Y, in his book "Hackers", gives a stimulating account of those earl
Y Years. TMRC' s Power and Signals group included most of the earl
Y PDP-1 hackers and the people who later bacame the core of the
MIT AI Lab staff. Thirt
Y Years later that connection is still ver
Y much alive, and this dictionar
Y accordingl
Y includes a number of entries from a recent revision of the TMRC dictionar
Y (via the Hacker Jargon File). [
Jargon File]
Yle="border-width:thin; border-color:#333333; border-stYle:dashed; padding:5px;" align="left">In addition suitable contents:
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