Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

3SpacewarIN the summer of 1961, Alan Kotok and the other TMRC hackers learned that anew company was soon to deliver to MIT, absolutely free, the next step incomputing, a machine that took the interactive principles of the TX-0 several stepsfurther. A machine that might be even better for hackers than the TX-0 was.The PDP-1. It would change computing forever. It would make the still hazyhacker dream come a little closer to reality.Alan Kotok had distinguished himself as a true wizard on the TX-0, so much sothat he, along with Saunders, Samson, Wagner, and a few others, had been hiredby Jack Dennis to be the Systems Programming Group of the TX-0. The paywould be a munificent $1.60 an hour. For a few of the hackers, the job was onemore excuse not to go to classes some hackers, like Samson, would nevergraduate, and be too busy hacking to really regret the loss. Kotok, though, wasable not only to manage his classes, but to establish himself as a "canonical"hacker. Around the TX-0 and TMRC, he was acquiring legendary status. Onehacker who was just arriving at MIT that year remembers Kotok givingnewcomers a demonstration of how the TX-0 worked: "I got the impression hewas hyperthyroid or something," recalled Bill Gosper, who would become acanonical hacker himself, "because he spoke very slowly and he was chubby andhis eyes were half-closed. That was completely and utterly the wrong impression.[Around the TX-0] Kotok had infinite moral authority. He had written the chessprogram. He understood hardware." (This last was not an inconsiderablecompliment "understanding hardware" was akin to fathoming the Tao of physicalnature.)The summer that the word came out about the PDP-1, Kotok was working forWestern Electric, kind of a dream job, since of all possible systems the phonesystem was admired most of all. The Model Railroad Club would often go on toursof phone company exchanges, much in the way that people with an interest inpainting might tour a museum. Kotok found it interesting that at the phonecompany, which had gotten so big in its decades of development, only a few of the