One of the things I enjoyed the most about writing Exploding The Phone was the research. (Given how long I took to write it, maybe that's obvious.) A side effect of all that research is that there are a bunch of interesting gems buried in the "Sources and Notes" chapter. This is one that really tickles me. It is from chapter 8, "Blue Box Bookies", and concerns the prosecution of Kenneth Hanna for using a blue box, and his novel defense strategy:
Amusingly, Hanna's attorney's argued that Hanna did not have a "blue box" because the box he had was "black with red buttons." The court was not persuaded: "It is evident that the term 'blue box' is nominative rather than descriptive, that it, it is the term by which the device is commonly known and, except by accident, has no reference to its actual color. [...] Implicit in this is the fact that whether blue, black with red buttons, red with black buttons, umber or indigo, the device is still called a 'blue box.'" United States v. Hanna and Modell
I will try to dig out some other gems from the Sourcers and Notes chapter and post them here.
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