The Tech (newspaper)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Tech, first published in 1881, is the oldest and largest campus newspaper at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Editions are published on Tuesday and Friday throughout the academic year, daily during freshman orientation period, once a week during January, and occasionally over the summer. Printed copies are distributed throughout the MIT campus on the morning of publication.
The Tech became the first newspaper published on the World Wide Web, as stated on its webpage: "The world's first newspaper on the Web, est. 1993." Earlier, StarText, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's videotex system which displayed newspaper content on computer screens, began in 1982 in Fort Worth, Texas (but did not go on the Internet until 1996). In 1987, the Middlesex News (Framingham, Massachusetts) launched Fred the Computer, a single-line BBS system used to preview the next day's edition and later to organize the newspaper's past film reviews.
Many pages from The Tech are accessible as PDF files. Here is the first page of the first issue: The Tech (November 16, 1881). Edited by Arthur W. Walker, it was printed by Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, located at 34 School Street in Boston. Today The Tech is printed by Charles River Publishing in Boston. For a period in the 1990s, The Tech was printed by Mass Web Printing Company, a unit of Phoenix Media/Communications Group, the publisher of the Boston Phoenix.
Writing under the pseudonym Charles Foster Ford, famed Boston theater critic Larry Stark got his start with The Tech in the years 1962-64. Here's Stark's review of Arthur Kopit's Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Momma's Hung You in the Closet, and I'm Feeling So Sad in The Tech (February 13, 1963)
For other issues, go to The Tech Archives.
Many other writers of note began at The Tech: Simson Garfinkel writes for Technology Review, Wired, and the Boston Globe. Arthur Hu's columns on affirmative action and the increasing number of Asian American students in the 1980s appeared in Asian Week and were quoted by Thomas Sowell. Karen W. Arenson writes about education topics for The New York Times. David Hamilton is a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Karen Kaplan is a science writer for the Los Angeles Times.
