Way back in the day (1972), Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak designed and started selling “blue boxes,” devices that generated specific tones that would game the telephone networks of the day (called “phreaking.” These would allow phone phreaks to make free long distance calls, for instance.
It was illegal then (the two Steve’s inspiration, “Cap’n Crunch” Draper, was sent to prison for five years for his own phreaking attempts), but you can get the same fun minus the jail time now at a new website that emulates the blue boxes of yesteryear.
If you have a blue box, you might be sad as it’s no longer useful, since the tone-based telephony system phased out in the 1980s. You simply dial into the Project MF phone line, and start playing with the different tones to see what happens with different tones and combinations.
If you’re of the electrical bent, you can find some great DIY instructions to make your own phreaker box over on the Fringeneering website.
According to BoingBoing, you can use your blue box to unlock and listen to a bunch of old recordings of dial-tone multifrequency (DTMF) music, interviews with a blind phone phreaking pioneer, and other weirdness, which just sounds like all kinds of retro fun, right?
Source: Project MF
Via: Boing Boing
Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he’ll really appreciate it.
One response to “Play with Jobs & Woz phone phreak machines without breaking the law”
My ex sold my ORIGINAL CAP’N “John Draper” CRUNCH bluebox (I ordered it from a BBS back in 81) to her “cousin” for $100 back when we divorced. I was later told the “cousin” was a collector who paid her more than $1500 for it. It’s apparently disappeared in the meantime as I filed a police report for it’s return and nobody can find it anymore.
…mind you, more than $40k worth of my belongings vanished over the course of the divorce so no surprise.