Lots of fun history around 2600Hz for those too young to remember or not part of the phreaking crowd, a fairly extinct form of hacker these days.
A phreaker going by Joybubbles was the first to exploit the tone by whistling. Later, a toy whistle in a cereal box was found to be able to produce the tone, leading to further exploit by John Draper, aka, Cap'n Crunch.
You can 3D print the whistle these days for a bit of nostalgia.
He also demonstrates whistling 2600hz during that interview, including doing so on one of the only US trunks in service at the time still using it for supervision.
> Later, a toy whistle in a cereal box was found to be able to produce the tone, leading to further exploit by John Draper, aka, Cap'n Crunch.
Not true, even he admitted, belatedly, that Denny Teresi introduced him to it:
> Denny called me and told me about this whistle that blew the magic tone that disconnects long distance phone calls, and that he had a spare. He asked me if I could drive him to San Francisco so he could show me how it worked.
Thank you for the corrections! Looks like I have to revisit some history. I never did make it that far back in the Off The Hook archives, despite being a 2600 subscriber for about the last decade. Hacking history is nothing short of muddy waters hiding all sorts of interesting things.
I was born in the very late 1970's, so I had the pleasure of trying to build my own Blue Box just as payphones were starting to see their death in the early 1990's. It was my first real attempt to be part of a group I felt I belonged with; the hackers. I grew up with the verbal history I mentioned, which as you pointed out is factually incorrect, but I cannot deny the power that mythos had over my thinking for the last few decades.
Thanks. I was in Team Virus and later Team Phreak, and we had plenty of people coming to tell their stories of being either Draper or the first to discover red/blue boxing after we put out NPA-NXX. A lot of absolute nonesense, but tons of fun while it lasted.
"The stark shift happened fast; in 1995, the number of pay phones in the U.S. peaked at 2.6 million, Slate reported in 2022. In less than three decades, that's dwindled to fewer than 100,000."
Not surprised at all to see the author on here. Your book is marvelous. I demolished your book on a flight a few years back, thoroughly enjoyed it, and was sad that it was all over so quickly (both the book, and the phreaking era). It has a permanent home on my shelf next to "The Cuckoo's Egg" as one of my favourite old tech storybooks and I recommend it to anyone vaguely interested in the subject.
Nice! I just ordered a copy and can't wait to read it! Getting Steve Wozniak to write the forward is quite literally a "ringing" endorsement. ;-)
Woz spoke at UC Berkeley (might have been 1998 commencement), and I asked him to sign an issue of 2600 magazine. After he signed it he flipped through it and asked if 2600 was still good and worth reading because he was thinking of getting a subscription for his son.
Hey, I notice you sell via a variety of sources. Which one ensures you the most ROI? I've always been curious, and like supporting others, but I worry that there's so many hands between you and your customer that by the time it the money reaches you, there is not much left.
That's a very kind question, thanks! In terms of what I get in the end, it doesn't really matter where you buy it (e.g., Amazon, local bookstore, whatever), although I'd love it if you supported your local bookstore -- they need help! Format matters a bit more in terms of royalty percentage (I get a higher percentage on ebooks)but ebooks also are priced lower, so the net to me between paperback and ebook is not much different.
I was going to suggest this book as well, but no need if you're here doing it. Just a quick thanks for the book! I've read it multiple times whenever I feel nostalgic, and recommend when the subject comes up. I've even gifted a few copies.
> for those too young to remember or not part of the phreaking crowd
Always important to remember that the telecom revolution was underway in 1890, let alone 1990. I still think the telephone system trumps the Internet in terms of revolutionary impact on society.
It was also the inspirational name behind a multitude of “hacker” (really more like tinker) communities back around the millennium. I’m not sure where these went, maybe they were killed by social media, but there used to be a lot of 2600 named tinker group for technology “nerds” here in Scandinavia. I guess what happened was the same thing which happened for me, people got older and stopped “hanging-out”, but I wonder where younger technology “nerds” go today. I think that it’s really interesting that the whole, very anarchistic mentality, which later spawned things like Anonymous doesn’t seem to have caught on with the younger generations even though they are even more oppressed and left behind by the current western economies and governments than my “generation” was. Most of it is still run by the people from that period who are now all 40+.
Anyway, I assume these as well as the tone are also a strong inspiration for the name.
I remember messing with a self-made blue box at my school's pay phone in the early 90s, mystifying and amazing my nerdy friends. That fun ended when the phone company visited the school, and it was blantantly obvious who was the culprit in the rash of telephone billing crimes committed from a single pay phone, only after 3pm. No charges pressed, but I had to promise some dude in a suit I had learned my lesson. I hadn't.
It was used to signal the status of Trunk lines, specifically if they were in use or open/available. By blowing a 2600 tone at the right time, you could seize the trunk and reroute the call.
I miss those days. Crawling in dumpsters at the local CO, staying up until 5a, on a school night, because you'd just discovered something really, really cool.
> FYI - 2600 Hz is a common handshake tone used in telco.
Was a common supervision tone used by the NA toll network prior to the introduction of SS7. Also practically everyone here knows (or ought to) that already, given that Jobs and Woz dabbled in making Blue Boxes for profit, and Blue Boxes produced 2600hz (along with the set of MF tones used to encode numbers). The fact you posted your redundant FYI with a mobile wikipedia link (phoneposting) is even more egregious.
Hence why “2600” is referenced.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2600_hertz