|
Several decades later a new technology came about and with it a new era. After World War II the United States was eager to cultivate new technologies in a race against the Soviet Union. Computer technology was a byproduct of the conflict. This era is named for the engineers and scientists behind this revolution. It is commonly known among hackers as the "Real Programmer Era".
In the 1960s computer science majors at MIT had to use large slow databases. They wrote time saving shortcuts, which they called "hacks". Hence the name Hackers. Among them were two bright young programmers named Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thomson. Together they invented UNIX, an operating system that became the standard among computer users.
In 1971 a Vietnam Vet named John Draper discovered that the tone of a whistle given out as a prize in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes duplicated the sound of a 2600-megahertz tone. Blowing one of these whistles into the receiver of a phone would allow a person to make free phone calls. When people realized that they could take advantage of a global network such as the Telephone Company an enthusiasm for underground technical knowledge grew to mammoth proportions. | 
