Tech Model Railroad Club
Encyclopedia
The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 (MIT), and one of the most celebrated model railroad
Rail transport modelling
Railway modelling or model railroading is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modelled at a reduced scale...

 clubs in the world, because of its historic role as a wellspring of hacker culture
Hacker culture
A hacker is a member of the computer programmer subculture originated in the 1960s in the United States academia, in particular around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 's Tech Model Railroad Club and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...

. Formed in 1946, its H0 scale layout specializes in automated operation of model trains.

History

In about 1948, the club obtained space in Room 20E-214, on the third floor of Building 20
Building 20
Building 20 was a temporary wooden structure hastily erected during World War II on the central campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since it was always regarded as "temporary", it never received a formal name throughout its 55-year existence...

, a "temporary" World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

-era structure, sometimes called "the Plywood Palace," which had been home to the MIT 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. Some of the key early members of the club were Jack Dennis
Jack Dennis
Jack Dennis is a computer scientist and retired MIT professor.Dennis entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949 as an electrical engineering major; he received his MS degree in 1954, and continued doctoral research and received his ScD in 1958...

 and Peter Samson
Peter Samson
Peter R. Samson is an American computer scientist, best known for creating pioneering computer software....

, who compiled the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language  and who are credited with originating the concept "Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free
Information wants to be free is a slogan of technology activists invoked against limiting access to information. According to criticism of intellectual property rights, the system of governmental control of exclusivity is in conflict with the development of a public domain of...

". The atmosphere was casual; members disliked authority. Members received a key to the room after logging 40 hours of work on the layout.

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 only after prototypes (GodComm), those that wanted to run trains on schedules, and those comprising 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 IBM 704
IBM 704
The IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware, was introduced by IBM in 1954. The 704 was significantly improved over the IBM 701 in terms of architecture as well as implementations which were not compatible with its predecessor.Changes from the 701 included...

, the multi-million dollar mainframe that was operated in Building 26, but access to and time on the mainframe was restricted to more important people. The group really became intensively involved with computers when Jack Dennis, a former member by then on the MIT Faculty, introduced them to the TX-0
TX-0
The TX-0, for Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo , was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. The TX-0 was built in 1955 and went online in 1956 and was used continually through the...

, a $3,000,000 computer on long-term-loan from Lincoln Laboratory
Lincoln Laboratory
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as...

.

At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by the mid-1950s. In about 1964, this was replaced by a second system built around the Number 5 Crossbar telephone switch
Number Five Crossbar Switching System
The Number Five Crossbar Switching System or 5XB switch, designed by Bell Labs and made by Western Electric, was in use in Bell System telephone exchanges from 1948 to the 1980s...

; the lead designer for this project was Alan Kotok
Alan Kotok
Alan Kotok was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and at the World Wide Web Consortium...

, by then a rising star on the design staff at Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation
Digital Equipment Corporation was a major American company in the computer industry and a leading vendor of computer systems, software and peripherals from the 1960s to the 1990s...

 (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 with relay switching, and an internal telephone system with external tie-lines, all built from telephone stepping switches and relays.

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.

Around 1970, Digital Equipment Corporation donated 2 PDP-11
PDP-11
The PDP-11 was a series of 16-bit minicomputers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation from 1970 into the 1990s, one of a succession of products in the PDP series. The PDP-11 replaced the PDP-8 in many real-time applications, although both product lines lived in parallel for more than 10 years...

 minicomputer
Minicomputer
A minicomputer is a class of multi-user computers that lies in the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems and the smallest single-user systems...

s. 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
Richard Greenblatt (programmer)
Richard D. Greenblatt is an American computer programmer. Along with Bill Gosper, he may be considered to have founded the hacker community, and holds a place of distinction in the Lisp and the MIT AI Lab communities.-Childhood:...

.

Vocabulary and neologisms

The TMRC spawned a unique vocabulary. Compiled in the TMRC Dictionary, it included terms that later became part of the hacker's Jargon File
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...

, such as "foo", "mung", and "frob". Other substitutions include "orifice" for office, "boner" for cloud, "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".

System layout

By 1962, the TMRC layout was already a complex electromechanical system, controlled by about 1200 relay
Relay
A relay is an electrically operated switch. Many relays use an electromagnet to operate a switching mechanism mechanically, but other operating principles are also used. Relays are used where it is necessary to control a circuit by a low-power signal , or where several circuits must be controlled...

s. There were scram
Scram
A scram or SCRAM is an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor – though the term has been extended to cover shutdowns of other complex operations, such as server farms and even large model railroads...

 switches located at numerous places around the room that could be pressed to shut down all movement on the tracks if something undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going full-bore at an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a relay-logic digital clock (humorously dubbed the "digital crock") on the dispatch board, which was itself something of a wonder in the days before cheap LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....

s and seven-segment display
Seven-segment display
A seven-segment display , or seven-segment indicator, is a form of electronic display device for displaying decimal numerals that is an alternative to the more complex dot-matrix displays...

s. 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".

The layout is set in the 1950s, when railroads operated steam, diesel, and electric engines side by side. This allows visitors to run any engine they want, without anything looking blatantly anachronistic.

Steven Levy
Steven Levy
Steven Levy is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.-Career:...

, in his book Hackers
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Anchor Press/Doubleday...

, gives a stimulating account of those early years. TMRC's Signals and Power Subcommittee liked to work on the layout's relays, switches, and wires, while the Midnight Requisitioning Committee obtained parts independently of campus procurement rules. The Signals and Power Subcommittee included most of the early TX-0
TX-0
The TX-0, for Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo , was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. The TX-0 was built in 1955 and went online in 1956 and was used continually through the...

 and PDP-1
PDP-1
The PDP-1 was the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1960. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture at MIT, BBN and elsewhere...

 computer hackers, and several people would later join the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. TMRC was even offered its own PDP-1 by 1965, although it had no space in which to install it and thus was forced to decline the gift.

MIT's legendary Building 20
Building 20
Building 20 was a temporary wooden structure hastily erected during World War II on the central campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since it was always regarded as "temporary", it never received a formal name throughout its 55-year existence...

, TMRC's home for 50 years, was slowly evacuated in 1996–98 and demolished in 1999, to make room for the Ray and Maria Stata Center. The club was offered a new space in Building N52, the MIT Museum
MIT Museum
MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is the museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It hosts collections of holography, artificial intelligence, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT. Its holography collection of 1800 pieces is the largest in...

 building. Most of the original layout could not be moved, and was reluctantly destroyed. Construction of a new layout began immediately and continues as of 2009. The telephone crossbar relay-based control system was moved into the new space and operated for two years but, as the new layout grew, the decision was made to replace it with an electronic equivalent. Known as "System 3", this new system comprises around 40 PIC16F877 microcontrollers
PIC microcontroller
PIC is a family of Harvard architecture microcontrollers made by Microchip Technology, derived from the PIC1650 originally developed by General Instrument's Microelectronics Division...

 under the command of a Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 PC.

An unusual feature of the new layout is an HO scale model of the Green Building
Green Building (MIT)
The Cecil and Ida Green Building, also called the Green Building or Building 54, is an academic and research building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It was designed by noted architect I. M. Pei, who received his bachelor's degree from MIT in...

, an 18-story building which is the tallest structure in the academic core of the MIT campus
Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is located on a tract in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. The campus spans approximately one mile of the north side of the Charles River basin directly opposite the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.The campus...

. It is wired with an array of window lights which can be used as a display for playing Tetris
Tetris
Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...

, in reference to a legendary (but apocryphal) MIT hack. See the article's subsection on Green Building hacks for more details on both real and never-realized hacks related to that structure.

Current activities

Twice a year, TMRC holds an Open House, and invites the MIT community and the general public to visit the club. At other times, visitors are generally welcome whenever members are present.

Famous members

  • John McCarthy
    John McCarthy (computer scientist)
    John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He coined the term "artificial intelligence" , invented the Lisp programming language and was highly influential in the early development of AI.McCarthy also influenced other areas of computing such as time sharing systems...

  • Jack Dennis
    Jack Dennis
    Jack Dennis is a computer scientist and retired MIT professor.Dennis entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1949 as an electrical engineering major; he received his MS degree in 1954, and continued doctoral research and received his ScD in 1958...

  • John McKenzie
    John McKenzie
    John McKenzie may refer to:* John McKenzie , New Zealand politician* John McKenzie , Canadian ice hockey player* John C. McKenzie , United States Representative from Illinois...

  • Peter Deutsch
    L. Peter Deutsch
    L Peter Deutsch or Peter Deutsch is the founder of Aladdin Enterprises and creator of Ghostscript, a free software PostScript and PDF interpreter....

  • Alan Kotok
    Alan Kotok
    Alan Kotok was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and at the World Wide Web Consortium...

  • Richard Greenblatt
    Richard Greenblatt (programmer)
    Richard D. Greenblatt is an American computer programmer. Along with Bill Gosper, he may be considered to have founded the hacker community, and holds a place of distinction in the Lisp and the MIT AI Lab communities.-Childhood:...


See also

  • Hacker (term)
  • Hacker (programmer subculture)
  • Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness, or to commemorate popular culture and historical topics. The pranks are anonymously installed at night by hackers, usually, but not exclusively...

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