<story><title>Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50403561</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dnc</author><text>I wonder where the fascination with trains and railways (that I share) comes from. Maybe from the 19th century industrialization and technological revolution when railway was one of its main symbols (&amp;quot;locomotion of progress&amp;quot;)? Related to this, it was a great surprise to me when I first found out about the origin of the term &amp;#x27;hacker&amp;#x27;:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;3. The Early Hackers&lt;p&gt;The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1. The Signals and Power committee of MIT&amp;#x27;s Tech Model Railroad Club adopted the machine as their favorite tech-toy and invented programming tools, slang, and an entire surrounding culture that is still recognizably with us today. These early years have been examined in the first part of Steven Levy&amp;#x27;s book Hackers [Levy] .&lt;p&gt;MIT&amp;#x27;s computer culture seems to have been the first to adopt the term `hacker&amp;#x27;. The Tech Model Railroad Club&amp;#x27;s hackers became the nucleus of MIT&amp;#x27;s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the world&amp;#x27;s leading center of AI research into the early 1980s. Their influence was spread far wider after 1969, the first year of the ARPANET. &amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;esr&amp;#x2F;writings&amp;#x2F;hacker-history&amp;#x2F;hacker-history-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;esr&amp;#x2F;writings&amp;#x2F;hacker-history&amp;#x2F;hacker-history-3...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>adrianmonk</author><text>A few possibilities for why people find trains fascinating:&lt;p&gt;1. Their place in history. Sailing has been around forever, but only recently in the grand scheme of things did land-based travel become quick and convenient. And trains did it. Cars came later. Trains revolutionized both industry and personal mobility.&lt;p&gt;2. Nostalgia for a time in the past when they were at their peak, before they were partially supplanted by cars. There&amp;#x27;s something intriguing about a technology we don&amp;#x27;t use nearly as much anymore but was once able to bear a key part of the burden of making society tick.&lt;p&gt;3. Cars and trains are both neat machines, but most people own or have access to a car, so there isn&amp;#x27;t a feeling of mystery or exclusivity around cars. How many people get a chance to drive a train even one time in their life?&lt;p&gt;4. Where they are used, trains naturally make themselves the center of attention. With cars, they come and go constantly, so the arrival or departure of a car isn&amp;#x27;t really an event. The arrival or departure of a train is an event, often with a schedule. When they were the dominant form of transportation, in a small town, probably everyone in the entire town knew what time the train arrived. Trains also make a lot of noise (whistles, horns, engines, etc.), so that&amp;#x27;s another way they&amp;#x27;re the center of attention.&lt;p&gt;5. A passenger train is part of the public sphere and is a location where things can happen. So it is its own social setting, like work, school, church, etc. are social settings.</text></comment>
<story><title>Sir Rod Stewart reveals his epic model railway city</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-50403561</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dnc</author><text>I wonder where the fascination with trains and railways (that I share) comes from. Maybe from the 19th century industrialization and technological revolution when railway was one of its main symbols (&amp;quot;locomotion of progress&amp;quot;)? Related to this, it was a great surprise to me when I first found out about the origin of the term &amp;#x27;hacker&amp;#x27;:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;3. The Early Hackers&lt;p&gt;The beginnings of the hacker culture as we know it today can be conveniently dated to 1961, the year MIT acquired the first PDP-1. The Signals and Power committee of MIT&amp;#x27;s Tech Model Railroad Club adopted the machine as their favorite tech-toy and invented programming tools, slang, and an entire surrounding culture that is still recognizably with us today. These early years have been examined in the first part of Steven Levy&amp;#x27;s book Hackers [Levy] .&lt;p&gt;MIT&amp;#x27;s computer culture seems to have been the first to adopt the term `hacker&amp;#x27;. The Tech Model Railroad Club&amp;#x27;s hackers became the nucleus of MIT&amp;#x27;s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the world&amp;#x27;s leading center of AI research into the early 1980s. Their influence was spread far wider after 1969, the first year of the ARPANET. &amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;esr&amp;#x2F;writings&amp;#x2F;hacker-history&amp;#x2F;hacker-history-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;catb.org&amp;#x2F;esr&amp;#x2F;writings&amp;#x2F;hacker-history&amp;#x2F;hacker-history-3...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>teh_klev</author><text>Link to TMRC&amp;#x27;s site:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tmrc.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;tmrc.mit.edu&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; (no SSL&amp;#x2F;TLS available)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s amazing how in a model, such as this one, the control system has gone from a bunch of mini-computers and relays over the years, to these days, in modern layouts, tiny DDC control modules and very compact hand held DCC controllers. And on top of that a reasonably mature common control protocol defined by the NMRA (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nmra.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nmra.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) that&amp;#x27;s pretty standard world wide.</text></comment>