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40 years ago today (May 21st 1983) "The Story of Mel” was published on Usenet by its author, Ed Nather. For years, “Mel” was considered a fictional character. Even though throughout the years some details were discovered, not much was known about the life and work of Mel Kaye. Now, Mel’s identity is finally revealed.

(Mel’s portrait, as Melvin Kornitzky, in the UCLA 1951 yearbook)

After years of researching, digging into public archives, and searching for actual proofs, we present a biographical article in which we unfold the identity of Mel Kaye.

A short excerpt from the article:

Mel Kaye (Melvin Kornitzky) was a software engineer, employed at Librascope and at Royal McBee in New York and Los Angeles between the years 1956-1960. Among other programs, he developed a Blackjack game for two models of first-generation digital computers – the LGP-30 and the RPC-4000. His Blackjack game was highly regarded by fellow engineers and computer science students. Mel also conceived the ingenious hack described in The Story of Mel by Ed Nather, which was published on the internet in 1983. Ed Nather’s story won Mel world fame in the hacking community and is regarded as a seminal epic in hacking folklore.

Read the full article Mel Kaye – CV

TL;DR: 39 years ago The Story of Mel was published on Usenet by its author. Today, we launch the Mel’s Loop project, with some fascinating details about the epic hacker folklore tale.

Today we celebrate the 39th anniversary of the first publication of The Story of Mel by Ed Nather. The Story of Mel was written as a memoir about the era of early computing of the late 1950s, creating a fresh memory of the days when Hackership was first forged. It continued to live through the years as an epic hacker folklore.

Little is known about the origins of The Story of Mel, its characters, and technical aspects. Over the past few years, we've spent a lot of time researching the story. We interviewed people who were related to it, and discovered some interesting details about the life and origins of Mel, Ed, and their stories, as well as the company where it all happened, and developed a deep perspective of Mel’s famous hack.

To celebrate this research, we launch today a new project: Mel’s Loop, which includes an annotated version of the story, along with articles and other materials that are soon to be added to this web companion – related to The Story of Mel, and to the Hacker Folklore genre in general.

During the research we were privileged to publish the translation of The Story of Mel into Hebrew, in an actual literary publication of a print literary periodical, last year. The Hebrew translation, together with Hebrew and English annotations, are now available on the Mel’s Loop website. I believe this is the first translation of the story, and hope the project will attract more translators of other languages.

Here’s a short excerpt from the initial biography entry for Mel Kaye (or as I later found out, Melvin Kornitzky, may he rest in peace) as it appears in annotation next to Mel’s name, on the project’s website:

Mel Kaye (Melvin Kornitzky, 1931-2018) was born in Brooklyn to a family of Jewish immigrants. During his childhood, the family moved to Los Angeles. In the Summer of 1956, Mel joined the commercial department of Librascope, a technology division within General Precision, which held government and army contracts. Mel worked as an Application Engineer in the Commercial Development department at the company's new and fancy Building 3 in Glendale, California. He also provided support to the company's clients on the LGP-30. Within a month from his hiring date, Mel was transferred, along with a few other engineers, to Royal-McBee, a business partner of General Precision that had taken the task of marketing and selling the LGP-30. During his time in Royal-McBee, Mel wrote a Blackjack game that ran on the LGP-30, which soon became the flagship demo program for the new machine and was widely used by the company. When the RPC-4000 was launched, Mel re-wrote (or 'ported') the Blackjack program to be compatible with the RPC-4000, for which he also wrote parts of the Assembly. As we know from The Story of Mel, Mel also helped Ed Nather with the task of writing a Fortran Compiler to that machine. Due to some differences of opinion with the company's management, Mel left Royal-McBee in the early 1960s. Some relics remained of his work, including a few hand-written code sheets and a usage guide to the Blackjack program for the RPC-4000.

Cover Photo: Left to right – Portraits of young Mel Kaye and Ed Nather, circa 1959. Illustration by Nir Yaniv, made according to photos and materials provided by Mel's Loop project.

We're happy to announce the first publication of The Story of Mel in Hebrew. The publication sees first light within the 13th volume of the literary periodical Dehak. This is the first time the story sees light within an actual literary platform, as a piece of actual folklore.

Along with the translation we've added an introductory preface, and 50-some sidenotes, to ease the read for the non-tech reader. Full text, with preface and comments will soon be published on Mel's Loop website.

The Story of Mel Hebrew Translation first fold, published in Dehak Literary Periodical

Dehak Literary Periodical #13 cover

Today we launch Mel's Loop to honor the 90th birthday of Mel Kaye, a real programmer, who passed away ~3 years ago. Mel's story lives on in the epic 80's hacker folklore The Story of Mel, which is as old as the internet itself.

The project’s goal is to delve into the early days of the computer age in California, where the story takes place, and follow the events, figures, technologies and surroundings of the story, in an era of lawless coders, where software could be forged out of whim and brilliance.