Computer hackers have existed almost as long as computers In fact, "hackers" have been in existence for more than a century. In 1878, just two years after the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, a group of teenage boys hired to run the switchboards were kicked off of a telephone system in New York. 

The reason? The boys were more interested in knowing how the phone system worked than in making proper connections and directing calls to the correct place. In essence, they were trying to "hack" the system to see how it worked.

Originally, "hacker" did not carry the negative connotations now associated with the term. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, computers were much different than the desktop or laptop systems most people are familiar with. In those days, most companies and universities used mainframe computers: giant, slow-moving hunks of metal locked away in temperature-controlled glass cages. It cost thousands of dollars to maintain and operate those machines, and programmers had to fight for access time.

Because of the time and money involved, computer programmers began looking for ways to get the most out of the machines. The best and brightest of those programmers created what they called "hacks" - shortcuts that would modify and improve the performance of a computer's operating system or applications and allow more tasks to be completed in a shorter time.

Not until the early 1980s did the word "hacker" earn disdain, when people like Kevin Mitnick, Kevin Poulsen and Vladimir Levin (more on them later) began using computers and the internet for their own questionable gains. Still, for all the negative things hackers have done, I believe they provide a necessary (and even valuable) service, which I'll elaborate on after a brief timeline of some of the high points (or low points, depending on how you look at it) in the history of computer hacking