The Complete History of Hacking

[1970] Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) introduces the famous PDP-11, which is considered to be one of the best designed minicomputers ever, and many of the machines are still used today. Some of the best computer hackers in the world cut their teeth on -11’s.

[1971] The first personal computer, the Kenback, is advertised in the September issue of Scientific American.

[1971] John Draper (’Cap’n Crunch’) learns that a toy whistle given away inside Cap’n Crunch cereal generates a 2600-hertz signal, the same high-pitched tone that accesses AT&T’s long-distance switching system. Draper builds a blue box that, when used in conjunction with the whistle and sounded into a phone receiver, allows phreakers to make free calls.

[1971] Esquire magazine publishes Secrets of the Little Blue Box with instructions for making a blue box, and wire fraud in the United States escalates. Among the perpetrators: college kids Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, future founders of Apple Computer, who launch a home industry making and selling blue boxes.

[1971] First e-mail program written by Ray Tomlinson and used on ARPANET which now has 64 nodes. Tomlinson of Bolt Beranek and Newman, contracted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to create the ARPANET, selects the @ symbol to separate user names in e-mail as the first e-mail messages are sent between computers.

[1972 May] John Draper arrested for phone phreaking and sentenced to four months in California’s Lompoc prison.

[1973] Intel’s chairman, Gordon Moore, publicly reveals the prophecy that the number of transistors on a microchip will double every year and a half. Moore’s Law will hold true for more than twenty years.

[1975] About 13,000 cash dispensing Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) are installed.

[1975] Atari, Inc.’s home version of PONG begins selling at 900 Sears and Roebuck stores under the Sears’ Telegames brand.

[1975 Aug] William Henry Gates, III (Bill Gates) and Paul Allen found Microsoft.

[1976] David R. Boggs and Robert M. Metcalfe invent Ethernet at Xerox in Palo Alto, California.

[1976 Apr] Stephen Wozniak, Steven Paul Jobs and Ron Wayne sign an agreement that founds Apple Computer on April 1.

[1977 Aug 3] The TRS-80 (’Trash-80′) Model I offered to the public and becomes the first desktop computer.

[1977 Dec] The Atari 2600 is selling for $199.95 and includes one game and two controllers.

[1978] Bill Joy produces first Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) of UNIX.

[1978] There are an estimated 5,000 desktop computers in use within the United States.

[1978] Kevin David Mitnick (’Condor’) meets phone phreak Lewis De Payne (’Roscoe’) of Roscoe gang while harassing a HAM radio operator on the air in Southern California.

[1979] The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie is published.