From LQWiki

The elder days is the heroic age of hackerdom (roughly, pre-1980); the era of the PDP-10, TECO, ITS, and the ARPANET. This term has been rather consciously adopted from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings. Compare Iron Age; see also elvish and Great Worm.

See also

• History of Hacking
• History of unix

This article is based, in whole or in part, on entry or entries in the Jargon File.