[hga]

Russell Noftsker, MIT AI Lab administrator from 1965 to 1973 (when he took a fall to keep two big names from becoming Federal felons) and founder of Symbolics was described in Levy's book as an explosives hacker. When he was growing up in Texas he and a friend would do work for construction/mining/whatever sorts of companies and take much or all of their pay in real, professional explosives.

When he moved to Boston, Levy said his wife had to talk him out of using det cord (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonating_cord) to clear sidewalks of snow. (All that from memory.)

I'm willing to call him a hacker; as you say, it's a mindset and is independent of coding.