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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I think we're going to see this pushed backward. An example of deep roots, 'bus' as in data bus, goes back to bus-bars which is electrical engineering from the pre-WWII date. There were no data busses in the 1930s but bus-bar was well understood.

For analogous reasons I therefore believe we'll see "hacker" roots going back a lot further.

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Well, there are hacksaws.

> The journal quotes George N. Clemson as follows:

"In 1884 we built a sawing machine for testing hack saws, in which we discovered that the blades we produced would cut twelve pieces of one-inch iron before re-sharpening was necessary. During the year 1886 we experimented with fifty-two kinds of hack saws."

And hack is an old German/Dutch word.

Maybe it's a stretch. But hacksaws are one of my favorite tools.

Totally off-topic, but hacksaws are also a favorite tool of mine. There is something totally fascinating to me about cutting through metal - likely because metal is typically strong and difficult to break. I have very fond memories of hacking things in my grandfather's shed when I was young, and to this day I really enjoy hacking through a drywall nail when doing home improvement tasks.

>fond memories of hacking things //

I think the phrase you're looking for is "sawing things". If you talk about using a chain saw you don't "chain a tree", you still "saw a tree". Your usage seems contrived.

Hmm. I see your point, that it does seem like I was contriving to use the term "hack" in a situation that might lend it to a (non-nefarious) precursor of the "hacking" term in the topic at hand. But in this case it was actually unintentional, and what I had in my head was more of "hacking things to pieces" as a boy who's found his way into his grandfather's shed is likely to do.

I'm sure that's how hacking came to be used for modifying cars, for example. And it's truly a specific example of the ad hoc, quick-and-dirty approach that we call computer hacking.

Long before personal computers, I was hacking on stuff. Explosives, rockets, guns, and whatever else my tween mind got curious about. I honestly don't remember when I heard the term "hacker". But in the early 60s, I was aware of Caltech ratfuckers vs MIT hackers.

And I'm pretty sure that I'd heard the term "hacker" in the NYC area. But not specifically about computers. More about mechanical stuff. And not about telephones either. That was phreaking. Phracking came later.

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