How the Resistors Put Computing Into 1960s Counter-Culture

Web site is still up, resistors.org . It looks like John and Margy Levine (first generation Resistors) are running it now. I think Dave Fox (2nd generation I guess) took care of it before. The linked article looks pretty good. There were a bunch of paper archives kept around that are probably still interesting. I don't know who has them now or if they still exist.

I didn't know about Trac64 or that Trac even really had the concept of bits. It was all string operations, including string arithmetic in arbitrary precision, I thought. But I never used it much. It could be seen as a weird take on both Forth and Lisp.

#(ps,#(rs))

> They borrowed an acoustic coupler—a forerunner of the computer modem—and connected it to a nearby pay phone

The acoustic coupler is mounted on a modem, and is just the cradle where you rest a handset. The device is not a forerunner of a modem, it is a modem.

> Kagan also allowed the teens to connect to his employer’s DEC PDP-8 machine via teletype over phone lines so they could run programs written in TRAC (Text Reckoning And Compiling).

> Being able to work with computers interactively and in real time was generally unavailable to nonprofessional computer users at the time [1966].

What a game-changer and privilege. What hope did kids have to learn about computing at the time? Reading about it in books and magazines wouldn't seem to be sufficient. Did people outside the computer professionals in the special room get to use them? What about people in accounting, science, mathematics, ballistics, etc.?

This resonates. A lot of real technical talent starts with curiosity and boundary-pushing as a teenager. Treating that impulse as purely criminal instead of something to mentor and redirect feels like a great way to waste the next generation of engineers and security researchers.

This is an excerpt from the book “README A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines” by W. Patrick McCray.

MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553483/readme/

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/README-Computing-Electronic-Everythin...

Trac64 implementation:

https://git.luxferre.top/nntrac/

In 2007 several people and I started NYC Resistor, a hacker space in Brooklyn, completely unaware of this resistors in New Jersey.

It was over 10 years later that any of us heard of this much older resistor. It's kinda it funny how similar we are to them, nearly shared a name, and completely unaware of each other.

The world needs more places where people can explore their curiosity of how things work.

It is a wonderful (and intriguing) to see the response. I was the first President of the club and starting as the Really Enthusiastic Students Involved in Science Or Research Studies, and it fascinating to see how it evolved and participants grew in their enthusiasm and skills. We actually started in an out-building of an actual Poor Farm, and then had the opportunity (facilitated by my bad) to connect with Claude and George and move to the barn. With our first computer, a Burroughs 205, being in the barn, insects and spiders were an issue - debugging was focused on the living bugs, then the programming ones. We need to encourage our youth to explore and grow, wihout limits. Amazing experience. Chris Brigham