Two Factions of the Model Railroad Club
There were two factions of TMRC. Some members loved the idea of spending their time building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional value, or creating realistic scenery for the layout. This was the knife-and-paintbrush contingent, and it subscribed to railroad magazines and booked the club for trips on aging train lines. The other faction centered on the Signals and Power Subcommittee of the club, and it cared far more about what went on under the layout. This was The System, which worked something like a collaboration between Rube Goldberg and Wernher von Braun, and it was constantly being improved, revamped, perfected, and sometimes “gronked”—in club jargon, screwed up. S&P people were obsessed with the way The System worked, its increasing complexities, how any change you made would affect other parts, and how you could put those relationships between the parts to optimal use.
Notes:
The club is were many hackers came from in the early days of computing. Half its members were into history and total control over a miniature world, the half that would become hackers were interested in the technology beneath the plywood.
Folksonomies: history technology computers
Taxonomies:
/society/unrest and war (0.512604)
/technology and computing (0.434177)
/art and entertainment/visual art and design/design (0.280618)
Keywords:
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Entities:
Model Railroad Club:Organization (0.895641 (negative:-0.366273)), Rube Goldberg:Person (0.653943 (neutral:0.000000)), Wernher von Braun:Person (0.625919 (neutral:0.000000)), Power Subcommittee:JobTitle (0.573740 (neutral:0.000000)), TMRC:City (0.479220 (negative:-0.244667))
Concepts:
Rube Goldberg (0.948984): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Wernher von Braun (0.947684): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc | yago
Tech Model Railroad Club (0.927050): dbpedia | freebase
Rube Goldberg machine (0.756110): website | dbpedia | freebase | yago
Rail transport (0.728501): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Locomotive (0.718402): dbpedia | freebase
Screwed Up (0.644754): dbpedia | freebase
Faction (0.644257): dbpedia
Hackers