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28-584: The first meeting of the Tech Model Railroad Club was organized by John Fitzallen Moore and Walter Marvin in November of 1946. Moore and Marvin had membership cards #0 and #1 and served as the first president and vice-president respectively. They then switched roles the following year. Circa 1948, the club obtained official MIT campus space in Room 20E-214, on the third floor of Building 20 ,

56-537: A Linux computer. An unusual feature of the new layout is an HO scale model of the Green Building , an 18-story building which is the tallest structure in the academic core of the MIT campus . The model is wired with an array of incandescent window lights, which can be used as a display for playing Tetris , and was a precursor to the project to do this with the actual building. Passersby inside Building N52 can view

84-648: A "temporary" World War II -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 and Peter Samson , who compiled the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language and who are credited with originating

112-477: A detailed 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 and PDP-1 computer hackers, and several people would later join the core of the MIT AI Lab staff. TMRC

140-770: A division of EMR/ Schlumberger ). In 1960, he joined Lockheed Electronics in Plainfield, New Jersey , where he advanced from Manager of Operations Analysis to Scientific Advisor to the President, while contributing to " moon-bounce " communication systems and optical signal processors, and creating an infrared laboratory and corporate acquisition analysis. While there, he was appointed to the Lockheed Corporate Research Council, and also attended Columbia University in New York half-time. For

168-513: A member of the U.S. hacker organization Cult of the Dead Cow . According to the group, its purpose was to demonstrate the lack of security in Microsoft 's Windows 9x series of operating systems. Although Back Orifice has legitimate purposes, such as remote administration , other factors make it suitable for illicit uses. The server can hide from cursory looks by users of the system. Since

196-512: A scram switch, the clock stops and the time display is 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 and diesel-electric engines side by side. This allows visitors to run a wide variety of model rolling stock without looking too anachronistic. In his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution , Steven Levy gives

224-585: A semi-annual Open House , inviting the MIT community and the general public to visit. At other times, visitors are generally welcome when members are present. John Fitzallen Moore John Fitzallen Moore (February 23, 1928 – January 31, 2018) was an American physicist , the son of authors Virginia Moore and Louis Untermeyer . His last name was legally changed after his parents' divorce. His work in military electronics, communications, and spectroscopy culminated in medical electronics and x-ray products with

252-487: Is a computer program designed for remote system administration . It enables a user to control a computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system from a remote location. The name is a play on words on Microsoft BackOffice Server software. It can also control multiple computers at the same time using imaging. Back Orifice has a client–server architecture. A small and unobtrusive server program

280-506: Is on one machine, which is remotely manipulated by a client program with a graphical user interface on another computer system. The two components communicate with one another using the TCP and/or UDP network protocols . In reference to the Leet phenomenon, this program commonly runs on port 31337. The program debuted at DEF CON 6 on August 1, 1998 and was the brainchild of Sir Dystic ,

308-504: 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 , the multimillion-dollar mainframe that was operated in Building 26, but access to and time on the mainframe

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336-463: The concept " Information wants to be free ". 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, those that wanted to run trains on schedules, and those composing

364-712: The founding of the company Bio-Imaging Research. After attending schools in Scottsville, Virginia and High Mowing School in Wilton, New Hampshire , Moore received a B.S. in nuclear physics from MIT in three years (where he and Walter Marvin Jr. founded the Tech Model Railroad Club in 1946), and won a National Science Foundation fellowship that led to an M.S. in solid-state physics from Harvard 's School of Applied Science. His first full-time employment

392-526: The hacker's Jargon File , such as " foo ", " mung ", and " frob ". Other substitutions include "orifice" for office (as in later Back Orifice ), "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 ". By 1962, the TMRC layout was already a complex electromechanical system, controlled by about 1200 relays . There were scram switches located at numerous places around

420-545: The inventor of X-ray CT scanning , in Northbrook, Illinois . There, he advanced to Vice-President of Engineering, and built the team that created the first CT scanner to take a picture in under 3 seconds. When EMI got out of the medical electronics business, he founded Bio-Imaging Research ( Lincolnshire, Illinois ). Initially, BIR created the world's first one-second CT scanner for Toshiba , and then branched into MRI , ultrasound , and industrial x-ray scanners, including

448-487: The latter, his Ph.D. thesis proved experimentally that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Venus has enough greenhouse effect to warm its surface to the spacecraft-observed temperature of over 460 °C (860 °F). After receiving his doctorate, Moore created new designs in spectroscopy and fluorometry as Director of Product Development at Spex Industries in Metuchen, New Jersey . In 1976 he joined EMI Medical,

476-519: The layout. There was also a digital clock display 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 plugs in the control system. Around 1970, Digital Equipment Corporation donated two small rackmount PDP-11 minicomputers . One

504-543: The megavolt x-ray systems that inspect trucks and cargo containers at ports and border crossings. He was awarded the Chicago Area High-Tech Entrepreneur of the Year in 1987 and 1989. In 2006, he sold BIR's medical division to Toshiba Medical, and in 2007 sold its industrial and security divisions to Varian Medical Systems . Moore served on several standards committees for medical imaging, and

532-400: The model through a window and play a monochromatic version of Tetris via remote control, accompanied by authentic-sounding music, even when the facility is closed. In 2011, an independent group of hackers reified this " holy grail " of hacking by installing and operating a full-sized color version of Tetris on the 295-foot (90 m) tall Green Building tower. As of April 2015, TMRC holds

560-404: 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 speed toward an obstruction. Another feature of the system was a relay-logic digital clock (dubbed the "digital crock") on the dispatch board, which was itself something of a wonder in the days before cheap LEDs and seven-segment displays . When someone hits

588-1103: Was Chairman of the Surface Weapons Board of the U.S. Naval Research Advisory Committee. He has published and presented numerous papers, including before the World Health Organization in Geneva . He retired after 27 years on the board of TC Manufacturing , and consulted in medical and radiation physics until passing away in 2018. He had five children (Robin [deceased], Sheila, Marjorie, Deborah [deceased], and Laurel) by his first marriage in 1948 to Joan Elizabeth Sanders (1928–1998), and two children ( Jonathan M. Moore and Cris Moore ) by his second marriage in 1963 to Betty-Ann Jorgensen (1938-2020). He collected original-cast musical comedy recordings and license plates, and his other interests included N-scale model railroading, mathematical games, and science fiction. Moore's patents include: Pending: Back Orifice Back Orifice (often shortened to BO )

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616-553: Was at Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts , where he worked on radar and telemetry . At Hycon Eastern ( Cambridge, Massachusetts ; later acquired by Northrop ), he moved from classified missile technology to become Systems Manager of a communications design office in Bangkok , Thailand . On his return, he again worked in aircraft and missile telemetry as Director of Research and Engineering at ASCOP ( Princeton, New Jersey ; later

644-487: Was called the ARRC (Automatic Railroad Running Computer). It could run a train over the entire set of track, in both directions without manual intervention, throwing switches and powering tracks ahead of the train. A mainframe program was used to compute the path, and all modifications to the layout had to be compatible with this ability. It was sometimes used to clean the tracks with a track scraper car. Sometime around 1964, this

672-400: Was demolished. Construction of a new layout began immediately and still continues. The vintage 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 under the command of

700-597: Was even offered its own multi-rack-cabinet PDP-1 by 1965, although it had no space in which to install it and thus was forced to decline the gift. MIT's Building 20 , 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 building. Most of the original layout could not be moved and

728-509: Was eventually used to operate the club's major freight yard, and the other was set up to perform user interface tasks, such as the 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 . The TMRC spawned a unique vocabulary. Compiled in the TMRC Dictionary, it included terms that later became part of

756-557: Was replaced by a second system built around the Number 5 Crossbar telephone switch ; the lead designer for this project was Alan Kotok , a prominent member of the design staff at Digital Equipment Corporation (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

784-540: Was restricted to more important people. The group really became intensively involved with computers when Jack Dennis, a former member who had by then joined the MIT Electrical Engineering faculty, introduced them to the TX-0 , a $ 3,000,000 computer on long-term loan from Lincoln Laboratory . At the club itself, a semi-automatic control system based on telephone relays was installed by the mid-1950s. It

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