Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

he soon found out that by clicking the switches on which the receiver rests, youcould actually dial a number. Someone on the other end will be saying, "Hello ...yes? Hello?" and you realize that this is not just a random piece of equipment, butsomething hooked to a system that you can endlessly explore. Stewart Nelson wassoon building things that few of his neighbors in the mid-1950s had seen, likeautomatic dialers and gadgets that could connect to several phone lines, receiving acall on one line and automatically calling out on the other. He learned to handletelephone equipment with the deftness with which an artist wields his tools;witnesses would later report how Nelson, when confronted with a phone, wouldimmediately dismantle it, first removing the filter which prevents the caller fromhearing the dialing signals, and then making a few adjustments so that the phonewould dial significantly faster. Essentially, he was reprogramming the telephone,unilaterally debugging Western Electric equipment.Stew's father died when he was fourteen, and his mother moved them up toPoughkeepsie, New York. He struck a deal with his high school teachers whereinhe would fix their radios and televisions in exchange for not having to go to class.Instead, he spent time at a small radio station starting up nearby Nelson "prettymuch put it together," he later explained, connecting the elements, tuning thetransmitter, finding sources of noise and hums in the system. When the radiostation was running, he was the main engineer, and sometimes he would even bethe disc jockey. Every glitch in the system was a new adventure, a new invitationto explore, to try something new, to see what might happen. To Stew-art Nelson,wanting to find out what might happen was the ultimate justification, stronger thanself-defense or temporary insanity.With that attitude, he fit in comfortably at the Tech Model Railroad Club and thePDP-1. There had already been avid interest in "phone hacking" around the club;with Nelson around, that interest could really flower. Besides being a technicalgenius, Nelson would attack problems with bird-dog perseverance. "He approachedproblems by taking action," Donald Eastlake, a hacker in Nelson's class, laterrecalled. "He was very persistent. If you try a few times and give up, you'll neverget there. But if you keep at it ... There's a lot of problems in the world which canreally be solved by applying two or three times the persistence that other peoplewill."Nelson was displaying an extension of the Hacker Ethic if we all acted on our driveto discover, we'd discover more, produce more, be in control of more. Naturally,the phone system was his initial object of exploration at MIT. First the PDP-1 andlater the PDP-6 were ideal tools to use in these excursions. But even as Nelson setoff on these electronic journeys, he adhered to the unofficial hacker morality. Youcould call anywhere, try anything, experiment endlessly, but you should not do itfor financial gain. Nelson disapproved of those MIT students who built "blue