TELEPUB '86
Channel: Channel2600
Date: 15/09/2023

Exclusive footage of a hacker gathering on March 8, 1986 featuring Cheshire Catalyst (also known as Richard Cheshire and Robert "Ozzie" Osband) at the Best Western hotel on 57th Street in New York City.

The purpose of this event, attended by around two dozen people, was to dispel rumors about the present and future of the hacker magazine called TAP. Cheshire was the magazine's editor at the time and he ran the meeting and addressed some rather contentious issues.

TAP had been coming out since the 1970s and its last issue had been published in 1983, one year before 2600 started publishing. Its disappearance from the scene was disturbing for many and led to random people claiming they were going to resurrect it. Two such people, the Wacko Cracko Brothers, were supposed to be at this meeting to announce their plans for the magazine. They never showed.

Much of the audio here is atrocious. It gets much better at around the 58 minute mark where the issue of TAP is addressed. Before that there is random discussion on telephone switches of the time and other technology, along with some discussion of a shady publication called Computel that had yet to put out an issue and appeared to be scamming a whole lot of people in the hacker community.

This meeting was extremely significant in that it brought some key people together for the very first time and relationships that exist to this day were forged right there in that room. It was a time before hacker conventions or 2600 meetings, both of which would start in earnest the following year. There were, however, weekly TAP meetings in New York City on Friday nights that outlasted the magazine they were named for and served as the inspiration for 2600 meetings.