Tech Model Railroad Club

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Passenger station and city scene on the Tech Nickel Plate Railroad. It includes a view of the HO scale model of the Green Building.
A view of the HO scale model of the Green Building at the Tech Model Railroad Club in Cambridge, MA.

The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Historically it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America.[1] Formed in 1946, its HO scale layout specializes in automated operation of model trains.

History

The first meeting of the Tech Model Railroad Club was organized by John Fitzallen Moore and Walter Marvin in November of 1946.[2] Moore and Marvin had membership cards #0 and #1 and served as the first president and vice-president respectively. They then switched roles the following year.

Circa 1948, the club obtained official MIT campus space in Room 20E-214, on the third floor of

Radiation Lab
during World War II.

The club's members, who shared a passion to find out how things worked and then to master them, were among the first

hackers.[1] Some of the key early members of the club were Jack Dennis and Peter Samson, who compiled the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language[4] and who are credited with originating the concept "Information wants to be free".[5] The atmosphere was casual; members disliked authority.[citation needed] Members received a key to the room after logging 40 hours of work on the layout.[6]

The club was composed of several groups, including those who were interested in building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional values, those that wanted to do scenery and buildings, those that wanted to run trains on schedules, and those composing the "Signals and Power Subcommittee" who created the circuits that made the trains run. This last group would be among the ones who popularized the term "hacker" among many other slang terms, and who eventually moved on to computers and programming. They were initially drawn to the

Lincoln Laboratory.[6]

At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by the mid-1950s. It was called the ARRC (Automatic Railroad Running Computer). It could run a train over the entire set of track, in both directions, without manual intervention, throwing switches and powering tracks ahead of the train. A mainframe program was used to compute the path, and all modifications to the layout had to be compatible with this ability. It was sometimes used to clean the tracks with a track scraper car. Sometime around 1964, this was replaced by a second system built around the Number 5 Crossbar telephone switch; the lead designer for this project was Alan Kotok, a prominent member of the design staff at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Equipment for this effort was donated by the telephone company via the Western Electric College Gift Plan. An extension to the basic control system allowed TMRC engineers to control switches on the layout. There was also a digital clock display with relay switching, and an internal telephone system with external tie-lines, all built from telephone stepping switches and relays.[citation needed]

The system of telephones was used for voice communication, for control of the clock, as well as for control of switches and blocks. Additionally, "j trains" (imaginary trains) could be run by use of plugs in the control system.[further explanation needed]

Around 1970, Digital Equipment Corporation donated two small

rackmount PDP-11 minicomputers. One was eventually used to operate the club's major freight yard and the other was set up to perform user interface tasks, such as initial assignment of trains to throttles, and to throw turnouts. The computer replaced the keypad unit from an old keypunch machine which had been originally installed by Richard Greenblatt.[citation needed
]

Vocabulary and neologisms

The TMRC spawned a unique vocabulary. Compiled in the TMRC Dictionary,

foo", "mung", and "frob". Other substitutions include "orifice" for office (as in later Back Orifice), "cruft" for garbage, and "hack", meaning an elaborate college prank carried out by MIT students. This last definition is the basis for the term "hacker".[citation needed
]

System layout

By 1962, the TMRC layout was already a complex electromechanical system, controlled by about 1200

LEDs and seven-segment displays. When someone hit a scram switch, the clock stopped and the time display was replaced with the word "FOO"; at TMRC the scram switches are therefore called "foo switches".[citation needed
]

The layout is set in the 1950s, when railroads operated steam and diesel-electric engines side by side. This allows visitors to run a wide variety of model rolling stock without looking too anachronistic.

In his book

MIT AI Lab staff. TMRC was even offered its own multi-rack-cabinet PDP-1 by 1965, although it had no space in which to install it and thus was forced to decline the gift.[citation needed
]

MIT's

PIC16F877 microcontrollers under the command of a Linux
computer.

An unusual feature of the new layout is an HO scale model of the

holy grail" of hacking, by installing and operating a full-sized color version of Tetris on the 295-foot (90 m) tall Green Building tower.[9][10][11]

Current activities

As of April 2015[update], TMRC holds a semi-annual Open House, inviting the MIT community and the general public to visit.[12] At other times, visitors are generally welcome when members are present.[13]

Notable members

See also

References

  1. ^ a b TMRC - Hackers, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, archived from the original on 2006-05-03, retrieved 2013-02-16
  2. ^ Onorato and Schupack (2002). Tech Model Railroad Club of MIT: The First Fifty Years. TMRC.
  3. ^ Building 20, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, archived from the original on 2008-07-23
  4. ^ a b Samson, Peter R. "The TMRC Dictionary". Gricer. Retrieved 2011-07-09.
  5. ^ Levy, History, Docstoc, 3. All information should be free... Number three, which dates back to 1959, is originally credited to Peter Samson [of TMRC]
  6. ^ a b Levy, Steven (1984), Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Anchor Press/Doubleday
  7. ^ Green building Tetris, Over sigma
  8. ^ "Green Building". Tmrc.mit.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-07-20. Retrieved 2011-03-12.
  9. ^ Pourian, Jessica J. (May 1, 2012). "The 'holy grail' of hacks: The construction of one of the most anticipated hacks of all time". The Tech. Vol. 132, no. 22. Retrieved 2012-05-06.
  10. Boston Globe
    . Retrieved 2012-05-06.
  11. ^ "Tetris on the Green Building". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved 2012-05-06.
  12. ^ "Open House Schedule". TMRC: The Tech Model Railroad Club. MIT. Archived from the original on 2015-03-24. Retrieved 2015-04-19.
  13. ^ "Visit & Contact". TMRC: The Tech Model Railroad Club. MIT. Archived from the original on 2015-03-24. Retrieved 2011-07-09.

External links

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