catflap.org Online Dictionary Query

  TMRC
       
          /tmerk'/ The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the
          wellsprings of hacker culture.  The 1959 "Dictionary of the
          TMRC Language" compiled by Peter Samson included several terms
          that became basics of the hackish vocabulary (see especially
          foo, mung, and frob).
       
          By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of
          complexity (and has grown in the thirty years since; all the
          features described here are still present).  The control
          system alone featured about 1200 relays.  There were scram
          switches located at numerous places around the room that
          could be thwacked if something undesirable was about to occur,
          such as a train going full-bore at an obstruction.  Another
          feature of the system was a digital clock on the dispatch
          board, which was itself something of a wonder in those bygone
          days before cheap LEDS and seven-segment displays.  When
          someone hit a scram switch the clock stopped and the display
          was replaced with the word "FOO"; at TMRC the scram switches
          are therefore called "foo switches".
       
          Steven Levy, in his book "Hackers", gives a stimulating
          account of those early years.  TMRC's Power and Signals group
          included most of the early PDP-1 hackers and the people who
          later bacame the core of the MIT AI Lab staff.  Thirty
          years later that connection is still very much alive, and this
          dictionary accordingly includes a number of entries from a
          recent revision of the TMRC dictionary (via the Hacker Jargon
          File).
       
          [{Jargon File]
       
       

  TMRC /tmerk'/ n. The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, one of the
     wellsprings of hacker culture. The 1959 "Dictionary of the TMRC
     Language" compiled by Peter Samson included several terms that became
     basics of the hackish vocabulary (see esp. foo, mung, and frob).
  
     By 1962, TMRC's legendary layout was already a marvel of complexity
     and has grown in the years since. All the features described here were
     still present when the old layout was decomissioned in 1998 just before
     the demolition of MIT Building 20, and will almost certainly be retained
     when the old layout is rebuilt (expected in 2003). The control system
     alone featured about 1200 relays. There were scram switches located at
     numerous places around the room that could be thwacked if something
     undesirable was about to occur, such as a train going full-bore at an
     obstruction. Another feature of the system was a digital clock on the
     dispatch board, which was itself something of a wonder in those bygone
     days before cheap LEDs and seven-segment displays. When someone hit a
     scram switch the clock stopped and the display was replaced with the
     word `FOO'; at TMRC the scram switches are therefore called `foo
     switches'.
  
     Steven Levy, in his book "Hackers" (see the Bibliography in Appendix
     C), gives a stimulating account of those early years. TMRC's Signals and
     Power Committee included many of the early PDP-1 hackers and the people
     who later became the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. Thirty years later
     that connection is still very much alive, and this lexicon accordingly
     includes a number of entries from a recent revision of the TMRC
     dictionary.
  
     TMRC has a web page at `http://tmrc-www.mit.edu'. The TMRC Dictionary
     is available there, at `http://tmrc-www.mit.edu/dictionary.html'.