The History of Phone Phreaking Blog

The Old Telephone Network: Two Sonic Tours

One of the biggest challenges I had in Exploding The Phone was to try to give some sense of what the old telephone network sounded like -- its "sonic landscape," if you will.  I did the best I could, but it's hard to do it justice.

Fortunately, a couple of people have created a pair of lovely guided tours of the sounds of the old network, so you can experience them for yourself.

The first one is from ElmerCat and is titled "Sounds of Long Distance Calls."  As he notes, "Today, every phone call you make sounds basically the same. However, back in the days of electromechanical switching, calls sounded quite different, depending on where you were calling, the type of local central office you were calling from, and the sometimes complicated route to get from one place to another..."

ElmerCat's web page gives a nice quick overview of old network sounds.  Phone phreak Evan Doorbell has one that is a bit longer and more detailed:

 

Of course, if you're hard core about this stuff, you'll want to check out Phone Trips, the Internet's home for old network sounds.

800 Historical Phone Phreaking Docs Posted ... Plus Extra Goodies

Scanned PDFs of about 800 historical documents related to phone phreaking are now available on the Exploding The Phone web site.  While researching the book  I amassed an unenviably large collection of papers -- newspaper and magazine articles, memos, FBI files, etc.  Most of these are now available on the web site as scanned PDFs.  Some examples:

• Flyers for the 1973 phone phreak convention in NYC
• Bell Labs memo discussing the Esquire article
• An FBI file on a 1974 investigation into a mass-produced blue box disguised as a desk calculator

(Thanks to the numerous phone phreaks who donated many of these docs.)

Of course, you can search the database of documents.  Some fun example searches:

• Joe Engressia, the famous blind kid described as the "granddaddy of phreaking"
• Ralph Barclay, the inventor of the blue box
• Ramparts magazine, which published "Regualting The Phone Company In Your Own Home" 

Finally, I've also posted some "extras" that I just couldn't fit into the book.  These range from small essays or stories to interview transcripts to more technical notes on various aspects of the old network.