The First Known Hacker...!

When we think of the term "hacker", most of us imagine a shadowy computer nerd type...or at least I do.

Surprisingly, the first known "hacker" showed up a very long time ago. This story from Listverse will tell you a little history of the man and of his famous hack.

Nevil Maskelyne Hacked A Wireless Telegraph Demonstration: 1903

Photo credit: Perpetual Efforts in Futility

The second it became physically possible to hack into something, somebody did it. That somebody’s name was Nevil Maskleyne, history’s first hacker, and he was around a lot earlier than you might expect. He hacked into a live telegraph demonstration in 1903.

Maskleyne didn’t even wait for wireless telegraphs to go on the market; he hacked into one of the first demonstrations. Its creator, Guglielmo Marconi, was putting on a presentation to show how it worked. Marconi wanted to prove to the public that his wireless telegraphs were secure and that anything they sent would be completely private.

As the presentation began, though, his telegraph started tapping out a strange message. First, it just beeped out the word “Rats” over and over again. Then it started punching out a limerick. “There was a young fellow of Italy,” it said, poking fun at Marconi, “who diddled the public quite prettily.”

Marconi was publicly humiliated. He didn’t have to wait long, though, to find out who was behind it. Maskleyne wrote papers bragging about what he’d done. He’d done it, he insisted, for the public good. They needed to know that if they were going to start sending messages without wires, their information wouldn’t stay private.

Well, now we know a bit more about the man and the door he opened to the rest of his kind. Funny how things like this always seem to get started as "for the public good", isn't it?

Coffee out on the patio this mornng.