[00:00.000 --> 00:02.700]  I hope no one was sleeping last night.
[00:04.300 --> 00:05.660]  I caught one guy.
[00:06.660 --> 00:07.780]  Don't want to see that again.
[00:09.520 --> 00:13.700]  This is The Fifth HOPE, Hackers on Planet Earth.
[00:14.160 --> 00:16.280]  Day two of a three-day conference.
[00:16.660 --> 00:17.600]  First session in here.
[00:17.700 --> 00:25.180]  We got started at nine o'clock over there and everyone was... many people in here are still out dealing with breakfast and caffeine and stuff like that.
[00:25.380 --> 00:28.020]  But we have an action-packed day today.
[00:28.380 --> 00:29.500]  Happy to see you.
[00:30.000 --> 00:31.500]  Everything was wonderful yesterday.
[00:31.760 --> 00:32.360]  Very smooth.
[00:32.760 --> 00:34.180]  A little crowded for Mitnick.
[00:34.380 --> 00:39.840]  We're hoping to have a remote feed down to the movie room for Woz.
[00:39.920 --> 00:41.160]  We'll keep you posted on that.
[00:42.060 --> 00:52.280]  But otherwise, the only thing I wanted to mention, other than be safe, be cool, enjoy, is we do have some stuff that's scheduled for the Area C and we'll keep you posted as people sign up.
[00:52.340 --> 00:55.140]  But if you're interested in giving a talk, you can do that.
[00:55.260 --> 01:02.120]  All you have to do is sign up in the Area C room, which is on your map, but it's just basically up the hallway here.
[01:04.970 --> 01:08.930]  The first session today is Freaking in the Early Days.
[01:09.730 --> 01:15.690]  I bring you John Draper, Captain Crunch, AKA, and Cheshire Catalyst.
[01:22.020 --> 01:22.740]  Thank you.
[01:25.160 --> 01:26.960]  Well, welcome to The Fifth HOPE.
[01:27.240 --> 01:28.640]  At least this is my Fifth HOPE.
[01:28.820 --> 01:29.940]  I've been here for all of them.
[01:30.620 --> 01:35.080]  And John and I have been around for a little while now.
[01:35.080 --> 01:37.900]  You might call us old school.
[01:39.100 --> 01:45.020]  I first read about John in an article in a magazine called Esquire.
[01:45.260 --> 01:47.940]  I doubt a few people have read that.
[01:48.220 --> 01:49.980]  A little bit before your time.
[01:50.600 --> 01:57.140]  I was actually in the army, stationed in Germany at the time, and it was known that I was interested in phones.
[01:57.740 --> 02:00.600]  I punched Telex overseas, so I was in communications.
[02:01.080 --> 02:05.380]  But they knew I was interested in phones, and somebody said, Hey, Cheshire, you seen this article yet?
[02:05.740 --> 02:15.440]  And little did I know where that little article by Ron Rosenbaum would lead me to a stage in front of all of you, explaining how some of this stuff works.
[02:17.280 --> 02:20.760]  Basically, the blue box... well, the way I like to tell the story...
[02:21.440 --> 02:27.340]  When you placed... and I'm going to use past tense, because remember, Blue Boxes are just totally obsolete now.
[02:27.620 --> 02:34.540]  The only reason 2600 has the shirts with the Blue Box schematics on them is because they're cool, yes.
[02:34.540 --> 02:37.460]  But the thing is, people still wanted the schematic.
[02:37.860 --> 02:47.260]  And the question was how to provide the schematic, provide value for money, and know that it was totally useless to you as a schematic.
[02:47.480 --> 02:50.360]  So they printed it on the t-shirt to make it a cool t-shirt.
[02:50.800 --> 03:11.240]  And, of course, up in the corner is the littler schematic of the Black Box, the drawing from Abby Hoffman's book, Steal This Book, where on page 87, he explains how a black box works, but you'll have to find the disgruntled New England telephone engineer to find the actual schematic.
[03:11.600 --> 03:14.400]  And turn the page to 88, and there's the schematic.
[03:16.140 --> 03:31.500]  When you placed a long-distance phone call, your telephone, your touch-tone telephone, produced a certain set of frequencies that told the central office incoming register where you wanted your call to go.
[03:32.360 --> 03:38.320]  It would pass that information on to the trunk equipment that would pass along the phone call.
[03:39.240 --> 03:40.740]  A Blue Box...
[03:40.740 --> 03:53.820]  Well, when you ask the operator to place the call for you, she was at a higher level than your central office, and her touch-tone pad put out a different set of frequencies that directly controlled the long lines equipment.
[03:53.820 --> 03:54.520]  Right.
[03:54.760 --> 03:58.520]  This is at a trunk level as opposed to a subscriber level.
[04:01.000 --> 04:07.540]  So, the blue box operator basically has a touch-tone pad with the operator's frequencies.
[04:08.940 --> 04:11.820]  Now, to place a blue box call...
[04:12.600 --> 04:14.300]  Actually, should we continue this story here?
[04:14.320 --> 04:21.720]  In fact, I'd like to start off here by giving you guys a little course on how the blue box works, and I also have a special treat.
[04:21.720 --> 04:25.820]  I have the biggest tandem stack ever on recording.
[04:26.120 --> 04:30.460]  And as a special treat tonight, I'm going to give you what it's all about.
[04:30.600 --> 04:35.080]  You get to actually experience the thrill of the use of a blue box.
[04:35.920 --> 04:38.000]  This tape was... this tape...
[04:38.000 --> 04:39.600]  I want to give credit where the credit is due.
[04:39.880 --> 04:42.740]  This I obtained from Richard Cashton.
[04:43.400 --> 04:44.940]  Richard Cashton's website.
[04:44.940 --> 04:47.580]  He used to be Marc Bernet back in the old days.
[04:48.260 --> 04:51.400]  Well, Richard Cashton has a website called Phonetrips.
[04:52.300 --> 04:55.600]  Wideweb.net or wideweb.com slash phonetrips.
[04:55.700 --> 04:58.300]  And I believe that this recording was from that.
[04:58.420 --> 05:01.720]  I have special permission from Richard to have you hear this tonight.
[05:02.300 --> 05:04.560]  Audio people, are you ready to patch in the audio?
[05:04.700 --> 05:05.280]  Here we go.
[05:05.280 --> 05:12.440]  Step one was to get onto the long distance network, usually by just simply dialing a long distance call.
[05:12.900 --> 05:19.780]  Anything that was more than about 75 miles out would go over a type of carrier system that would respond to 2600.
[05:26.980 --> 05:36.120]  By the way, what you're hearing there is a number one crossbar subscriber level line.
[05:37.100 --> 05:38.640]  These do not exist anymore.
[05:51.240 --> 05:53.660]  The number that's ringing at this point doesn't matter.
[05:53.920 --> 06:00.960]  What's important is that this call has gone over a trunk from New York to a distant 4A, which can be reset by 2600.
[06:06.490 --> 06:09.390]  That's the supervision handshake, off hook, on hook.
[06:09.570 --> 06:12.710]  And now it's waiting for new digits, which Ben will supply.
[06:16.250 --> 06:21.650]  Stopping the tape now, what he dialed was 216054064.
[06:22.130 --> 06:24.310]  These are old routing codes.
[06:24.530 --> 06:30.630]  The network of the 1970s had routing codes for tandems in all major cities.
[06:31.090 --> 06:36.550]  The first code, 216054, is the routing code for Youngstown, Ohio.
[06:36.550 --> 06:43.770]  The 064, in the area code of 216, is the routing code for Canton, Ohio.
[06:44.230 --> 06:46.210]  Both of these are crossbar tandems.
[06:46.730 --> 06:55.770]  When Ben keys in this sequence, the 4A into which he is keying, picks up the trunk to Youngstown, Ohio, and sends 064.
[06:57.150 --> 07:02.030]  That tick is the 4A cutting through to Youngstown, Ohio after having sent 064.
[07:02.950 --> 07:05.630]  Now what does Youngstown do with the 064?
[07:06.030 --> 07:08.090]  Well, it picks up a trunk to Canton.
[07:08.370 --> 07:09.590]  That's the code for Canton.
[07:09.990 --> 07:18.530]  But having then sent only the routing code and no digits to follow it, it simply dumps us into the Canton trunk without sending anything.
[07:18.850 --> 07:20.790]  In other words, it stacks.
[07:22.430 --> 07:25.990]  That's the sound of Youngstown, Ohio, dumping us into a trunk to Canton.
[07:27.990 --> 07:29.950]  And that's the handshake from Canton.
[07:29.950 --> 07:33.290]  Canton, Ohio, is now ready to receive digits.
[07:38.250 --> 07:39.370]  That's 054064.
[07:39.810 --> 07:44.070]  This causes Canton to pick up a trunk to Youngstown and send 064.
[07:45.570 --> 07:49.810]  Now we're in Youngstown again, which stacks into Canton.
[07:50.150 --> 07:53.910]  And then Canton gives us the handshake.
[07:54.110 --> 07:56.350]  And we'll do another 054064.
[07:59.600 --> 08:01.160]  Now we're in Youngstown again.
[08:02.100 --> 08:03.480]  Youngstown stacks to Canton.
[08:06.260 --> 08:07.380]  That's the handshake.
[08:07.520 --> 08:08.320]  And here we go again.
[08:10.820 --> 08:11.700]  Same digits.
[08:12.340 --> 08:12.900]  Youngstown.
[08:13.320 --> 08:13.880]  Canton.
[08:16.460 --> 08:17.020]  Handshake.
[08:19.600 --> 08:22.920]  Now the connection has gotten so long that the handshake is all you can hear.
[08:25.660 --> 08:31.480]  Now on that supervision flash you could really hear multiple links both on the off-hook and the on-hook.
[08:33.840 --> 08:35.060]  He's going around again.
[08:38.980 --> 08:42.360]  That was such a short flash that you didn't get to hear all the on-hooks.
[08:45.990 --> 08:52.730]  You've been listening to the beginning of the original 1975 tape, stretched, to allow me to describe what's going on.
[08:53.190 --> 08:56.690]  Let me go back and play this part again without stopping to talk on it.
[09:25.710 --> 09:27.310]  By the way, I wanted to say one thing.
[09:27.890 --> 09:31.810]  There are two tones at the beginning and at the end.
[09:31.810 --> 09:34.370]  One is called the key pulse and the other is start.
[09:34.650 --> 09:36.310]  And the announcer failed to mention that.
[10:29.940 --> 10:30.640]  That long.
[10:36.010 --> 10:36.450]  Yeah.
[10:38.990 --> 10:39.250]  You talk.
[10:40.250 --> 10:40.790]  Hold on.
[10:40.970 --> 10:41.330]  Okay.
[10:41.590 --> 10:42.390]  What happened there?
[10:42.790 --> 10:43.230]  Okay.
[10:43.370 --> 10:44.650]  Let's stop it at this point.
[10:44.710 --> 10:48.850]  And I wanted to just make a few things clear in case you might be confused.
[10:50.090 --> 10:55.890]  The announcer basically said, was giving the digits for going through Canton and the other place.
[10:56.630 --> 10:57.070]  Youngstown.
[10:57.070 --> 11:03.130]  And what you might have noticed was that there is two tones at the beginning and at the end.
[11:03.530 --> 11:06.070]  The first tone at the beginning is called key pulse.
[11:06.270 --> 11:11.910]  And that's 1,700 plus, I think, 1,100.
[11:12.250 --> 11:16.490]  And then the start tone is 1,700 plus 1,500.
[11:18.050 --> 11:22.750]  And basically, the 1,700 tone was only used for the key pulse and start.
[11:22.750 --> 11:32.170]  The 1,700 tone is also used to do another special key pulse called key pulse 2, which is often used for international switching, which is normally not used in domestic.
[11:32.250 --> 11:34.710]  This is what is called a C1 signaling.
[11:35.350 --> 11:35.850]  Okay.
[11:36.090 --> 11:38.170]  It's strictly a 2,600 handshake.
[11:38.170 --> 11:49.430]  There are other more complex methods of signaling called C4 or C5 or something like that signaling, where you're using a combination of 2,600 plus 2,400.
[11:49.690 --> 11:52.130]  And there's a more complex handshaking involved.
[11:52.690 --> 11:55.810]  At this point, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Cheshire to talk a little bit.
[11:55.890 --> 11:57.950]  I'm going to get the next part of the tape queued up here.
[11:59.030 --> 12:08.350]  The designations, C1 and such, and our system of using 2600 was, I believe, RR2, regional something 2.
[12:08.610 --> 12:12.670]  And these were designations of the International Telecommunications Union.
[12:13.390 --> 12:16.890]  This is a United Nations agency based in Geneva, Switzerland.
[12:17.470 --> 12:24.030]  They have their own very large building, very close to the Palais des Nations, the United Nations headquarters in Geneva.
[12:24.030 --> 12:30.990]  I know, because in 1979, when I went over for Telecom 79, I actually visited the building because I wanted to visit their library.
[12:32.290 --> 12:40.950]  When I lived here in New York City for about 12 years in the 70s and early 80s, one of my favorite basements was the basement of the United Nations building.
[12:41.370 --> 12:51.530]  There is a bookstore there that anyone can go in through the public entrance, go downstairs next to the post office where you can buy stamps allowing you to put more money in the U.N.
[12:51.590 --> 12:52.890]  Treasury than some member states.
[12:55.430 --> 12:56.770]  You can go into that library.
[12:56.910 --> 13:01.410]  They used to have many of the publications of the International Telecommunications Union.
[13:02.050 --> 13:07.470]  I would go in, I would peruse the books, I would kind of be in the way because they are very narrow aisles.
[13:07.790 --> 13:11.130]  Excuse me, so could you please, over in the corner, have a little stool where you can sit.
[13:12.050 --> 13:13.510]  But they let me read the books.
[13:13.570 --> 13:14.150]  It was wonderful.
[13:15.230 --> 13:25.090]  It got so bad that when I finally had access to the world Telex network, every couple of years I would send a Telex to the ITU in Geneva asking for two copies of their book catalog.
[13:25.490 --> 13:28.310]  And I would take one into the bookstore because they never got them.
[13:30.630 --> 13:36.990]  So going through these books, you learn early, well, over in Europe, you know, every 30 miles there's another national border.
[13:37.410 --> 13:41.910]  So everything over there is by international agreement, international standards.
[13:41.910 --> 13:53.650]  And these international standards are referred to as recommendations because you cannot dictate to sovereign nations how they will run their post office, which of course runs their phone company over there.
[13:53.890 --> 13:56.090]  You may only make recommendations.
[13:56.750 --> 13:59.430]  Of course, these are recommendations which practically have the force of law.
[13:59.850 --> 14:09.210]  But they are agreed upon by the different nation states, not only in Europe, but among the other international telecommunications union member states around the world.
[14:09.210 --> 14:11.210]  And it's these designations.
[14:11.450 --> 14:14.910]  Well, keep in mind that the phone was invented here in America.
[14:16.030 --> 14:21.270]  And AT&T, Bell Labs, would usually send a big contingent overseas.
[14:21.730 --> 14:24.990]  Of course, there were other companies such as Ericsson in Sweden.
[14:25.510 --> 14:28.670]  And all of these international standards had to be hammered together.
[14:28.910 --> 14:32.970]  You may have noticed in the front of your phone book the list of country codes.
[14:33.930 --> 14:37.950]  And North America is country code one.
[14:40.510 --> 14:44.490]  And overseas, where you've got, say, 49 for Germany.
[14:44.790 --> 14:47.630]  On a German business card, you'll see a plus sign.
[14:48.010 --> 14:51.030]  Then 49, a city code, and the number.
[14:51.290 --> 14:57.630]  The plus sign really means, add your country's exit code before my country code.
[14:58.110 --> 15:04.510]  So on my business cards, it has plus one, 321, et cetera, for my phone number.
[15:04.730 --> 15:07.730]  And Americans just think, oh, he's just saying, you know, dial one plus the area code.
[15:07.950 --> 15:08.630]  But no.
[15:08.910 --> 15:10.810]  The one is my country code.
[15:10.970 --> 15:13.990]  So that when my card winds up overseas, they know how to reach me.
[15:13.990 --> 15:20.150]  I might want to add a little bit about country, about area codes in foreign countries in Europe and the UK.
[15:20.950 --> 15:24.190]  The bigger the city, the smaller the area code.
[15:24.510 --> 15:27.390]  The smaller the city, the bigger the area code.
[15:27.510 --> 15:28.890]  It's usually the rule of thumb.
[15:29.130 --> 15:35.370]  If you're in a very small village in the UK, your area code might be 063813.
[15:35.370 --> 15:38.490]  If you're in London, the area code might be...
[15:38.490 --> 15:39.750]  Well, it used to be 0...
[15:39.750 --> 15:40.350]  What is it?
[15:40.470 --> 15:40.790]  Just one.
[15:41.230 --> 15:41.850]  01 before.
[15:42.110 --> 15:44.570]  And then they changed the area code to be 071...
[15:44.570 --> 15:45.390]  071 and 081.
[15:45.550 --> 15:46.270]  081, yeah.
[15:46.390 --> 15:46.950]  I remember that.
[15:47.230 --> 15:52.790]  The thing is that the reason for that are the old-fashioned rotary dials.
[15:53.670 --> 15:58.230]  Because you would hold an incoming register for longer, the bigger the number.
[15:58.390 --> 15:59.030]  And it's also...
[15:59.030 --> 16:00.570]  Because it was one pulse per digit.
[16:00.830 --> 16:01.090]  Nine.
[16:01.430 --> 16:03.590]  Dialing a nine meant nine pulses.
[16:04.750 --> 16:09.350]  And so, those large cities, you just want to get that one in there, meaning London.
[16:09.690 --> 16:10.910]  And then you're just going to go there.
[16:11.070 --> 16:12.610]  And then you'll have the various exchanges.
[16:13.130 --> 16:20.430]  But the smaller cities, you're going to take up more time dialing that number and hold that incoming register longer.
[16:20.750 --> 16:23.310]  But you won't have as many calls to those small cities.
[16:23.710 --> 16:30.650]  So overall, in the grand scheme of things, you can level out the amount of time needed to hold an incoming register.
[16:31.070 --> 16:36.510]  And therefore, how many incoming registers you need to set up your telephone exchange.
[16:36.870 --> 16:37.370]  Yeah.
[16:37.590 --> 16:39.490]  And bigger cities, of course, required more.
[16:39.650 --> 16:40.890]  So your area codes are smaller.
[16:40.890 --> 16:48.310]  I went to the first public hearings here in New York City when they were going to do something really radical.
[16:48.870 --> 16:57.230]  They were going to split 2-1-2 and create 7-1-8 in the, quote, other boroughs, close quote.
[16:58.190 --> 17:04.910]  I say that because we got a lecture from the borough presidents of Brooklyn when people were referring to the outer boroughs.
[17:05.690 --> 17:09.270]  So there is Manhattan and there are the other boroughs.
[17:09.450 --> 17:11.550]  Please keep that in mind while you're in the city.
[17:13.290 --> 17:23.650]  I pointed out in my testimony that, and by the way, I think I was about the only person of all the people testifying in favor of the split.
[17:23.650 --> 17:26.350]  It was technologically based, of course.
[17:26.490 --> 17:28.510]  They were running out of exchanges, of course, they needed.
[17:28.830 --> 17:39.210]  All I asked in return was to remove the $1 a month charge for touch tone, making it easier for people to dial the extra three digits.
[17:39.890 --> 17:42.950]  And my reasoning was the incoming registers.
[17:43.570 --> 17:49.230]  Because in 1964, my folks brought me down from Rochester, New York for the New York World's Fair.
[17:50.030 --> 17:54.550]  Needless to say, one of my favorite pavilions was the Bell System Pavilion.
[17:54.930 --> 18:00.610]  And they had an exhibit there where you could rotary dial your telephone number and it would time you.
[18:01.030 --> 18:04.270]  And then, right next to it, was a touch tone pad.
[18:04.470 --> 18:07.490]  And you could touch tone your number in and it would time you.
[18:07.590 --> 18:16.650]  And as unfamiliar as I was with touch tone back then, because it was brand new, of course, I still made better time with the touch tone pad than I did with the rotary dial.
[18:17.330 --> 18:18.490]  And pointed this out to the commission.
[18:18.730 --> 18:20.410]  Unless, of course, you made a zip dial.
[18:20.750 --> 18:22.090]  Well, not in those days.
[18:22.210 --> 18:25.270]  You take the spring out of the phone and the dial would turn really fast.
[18:25.850 --> 18:28.430]  Works great when you want to try to win the radio contest.
[18:31.070 --> 18:47.310]  But in my testimony, I pointed out that touch tone meant that you held the incoming register for less time, you would not need as many incoming registers, and therefore reduce the cost of the changeover to the new area code.
[18:49.050 --> 18:57.310]  Well, I was told this was not a rate hearing, and that my testimony was not valid to the point of this particular hearing.
[18:58.170 --> 19:04.070]  But the administrative law judge invited me to come back the following month, when they had a rate hearing.
[19:04.330 --> 19:05.430]  That was fun.
[19:08.030 --> 19:10.850]  I want to get back now into some more of the recordings.
[19:11.210 --> 19:14.870]  This recording... I'm kind of skipping around.
[19:14.870 --> 19:21.890]  It's a very long recording, and you can see me after the session is over, and I can tell you where you can get a full copy of this.
[19:22.970 --> 19:31.130]  I will probably wind up putting it on my website and putting it into an FTP area where you can FTP it.
[19:31.170 --> 19:32.990]  I haven't had a chance to do that yet, but...
[19:32.990 --> 19:37.090]  Or you can possibly get it off of the Wide Web Phonetrips website as well.
[19:37.470 --> 19:37.970]  Needless to see...
[19:37.970 --> 19:40.770]  It's a 70 megabyte WAV file, by the way, so it's pretty large.
[19:41.250 --> 19:44.450]  One of my jobs with the HOPE conferences is following the conference.
[19:44.710 --> 19:48.750]  I set up a page of links from the conference, including speaker's notes.
[19:49.050 --> 19:51.910]  And so this will be one of the links that we'll have on the website.
[19:51.910 --> 19:54.950]  Give me about a week or two after the conference to set it up.
[19:55.010 --> 19:56.490]  It will be at hope.net.
[19:57.590 --> 19:58.390]  Yeah, okay.
[19:58.610 --> 20:00.210]  Let me get started on this.
[20:00.470 --> 20:01.130]  And this...
[20:01.870 --> 20:02.690]  Oh, wait a sec.
[20:06.230 --> 20:07.310]  Plug the speaker back in.
[20:07.310 --> 20:08.090]  Yes.
[20:09.910 --> 20:11.930]  This was just a wonderful thing.
[20:12.330 --> 20:12.890]  Oh, okay.
[20:13.330 --> 20:14.730]  When I listen to this...
[20:14.730 --> 20:15.970]  I mean, in a minute...
[20:15.970 --> 20:17.450]  The other voice you hear on there is Bill.
[20:17.450 --> 20:20.870]  When he successfully calls the phone next to me.
[20:21.690 --> 20:23.610]  And it is just so cool.
[20:29.490 --> 20:32.390]  I might want to add one more thing really quick before this goes.
[20:32.570 --> 20:38.850]  That little tone you hear right after the 2600 burst, that's what is called a tone applier.
[20:39.850 --> 20:50.610]  This is a special little device set aside because back in the old days when you were calling a number that was like a non-existent number and you get a reorder or a quick busy.
[20:50.970 --> 20:58.730]  Well, they would use the 2600 flash because that's how they could pass the reorder across a carrier to a distant office.
[21:06.810 --> 21:08.490]  They're setting up the stack now.
[21:17.310 --> 21:21.190]  And what they're doing is they're going to actually call the phone next to them.
[21:21.890 --> 21:27.910]  And then they're going to be doing some experimentation where you flash forward and flash back.
[21:28.550 --> 21:37.190]  They can... they'll basically tie the amplifier on the originating line and hear what it sounds like from there.
[21:37.410 --> 21:42.470]  And then they'll take the audio amplifier and connect it to the called line.
[21:43.170 --> 21:45.650]  And let you hear it from that perspective.
[21:46.350 --> 21:48.790]  And it gives you some really interesting things to hear.
[21:51.730 --> 21:52.170]  Yeah.
[21:52.410 --> 21:58.690]  And then at the end, of course, it'll drop off and you'll hear all these things kind of all unravel.
[22:03.110 --> 22:04.950]  And they're calling the phone next to them now.
[22:04.950 --> 22:06.650]  Can I say something about the tone of flyer?
[22:06.770 --> 22:07.210]  Yeah.
[22:07.550 --> 22:11.730]  That... people must be wondering about what that sort of busy signal sound is.
[22:11.910 --> 22:12.130]  Yeah.
[22:12.270 --> 22:19.050]  Every time we get a supervision off hook, except for the first time when he whishled off initially, there's this bop type sound.
[22:19.050 --> 22:23.070]  And that is the tone out of which busy signal is made.
[22:23.110 --> 22:28.450]  And that is being put on the line by Forrest Hills, his originating...
[22:28.450 --> 22:29.190]  Toll tandem.
[22:29.330 --> 22:30.130]  Toll tandem, yes.
[22:30.510 --> 22:32.510]  And that's why we're hearing that on the handshakes.
[22:32.590 --> 22:33.650]  It's not part of the handshake.
[22:33.790 --> 22:35.770]  It's actually something that Forrest Hills adds.
[22:36.170 --> 22:44.930]  The reason it does that is because in the old days, busy signals used to flash supervision, and it was thought that if the call was so long...
[22:46.190 --> 22:47.550]  Given what we're discussing.
[22:47.550 --> 22:48.110]  Right.
[22:48.310 --> 22:49.510]  Not this long, but long.
[22:49.590 --> 22:51.150]  Nothing was ever this long.
[22:51.250 --> 22:51.310]  Right.
[22:51.310 --> 22:52.510]  At least we hope it never was.
[22:52.690 --> 22:52.770]  Right.
[22:53.650 --> 23:00.530]  But you could see where you might get, if there was a busy signal flashing at the far end, you could kind of lose that in the clicking.
[23:00.910 --> 23:01.150]  Right.
[23:01.310 --> 23:04.690]  So it was felt that they had to reapply the busy tone locally.
[23:05.550 --> 23:10.630]  One of the things he always does first when he calls himself is that he just flashes.
[23:10.970 --> 23:14.590]  He picks up the phone and hangs it up, but not long enough to charge the call.
[23:19.170 --> 23:30.690]  By the way, that tone applier will only work if the other end hasn't been off hook long enough to actually cause the supervision or charge back to your local office.
[23:31.470 --> 23:39.910]  And so the next time you were to, let's say, if the call had been answered, and then if they flash the hook switch again, you won't get that tone applier.
[23:47.300 --> 23:48.740]  Now that is a stack.
[23:53.840 --> 24:01.580]  And what you're hearing is you're hearing it from the phone that's actually calling.
[24:03.980 --> 24:06.780]  And all he's doing is picking up the other phone.
[24:07.720 --> 24:08.620]  That's picked up.
[24:09.850 --> 24:10.800]  That's where he hangs up.
[24:15.920 --> 24:20.980]  I hear they're just picking it up and hanging it up real quick and it kind of like, sort of, almost makes it back.
[24:22.720 --> 24:23.260]  Almost there.
[24:23.360 --> 24:23.960]  Ah, there you go.
[24:26.000 --> 24:27.580]  Yeah, he's doing short flashes.
[24:29.720 --> 24:32.160]  And sometimes they're so short they don't even get all the way back.
[25:13.400 --> 25:15.120]  Okay, I'm gonna run this up.
[25:15.300 --> 25:16.660]  We'll put this line on hold.
[25:16.840 --> 25:18.360]  And I'll do the same thing now.
[25:18.860 --> 25:20.260]  From the clawed end.
[25:21.140 --> 25:22.420]  So, stand by tape recorder.
[25:23.120 --> 25:26.420]  Now what they're doing now is they're switching it over to the other line.
[25:27.820 --> 25:30.920]  If you hear very faint in the background, you hear the 2600?
[25:32.120 --> 25:35.740]  What you're hearing is just a little bit of a leak through from the filters.
[25:36.240 --> 25:37.660]  Because when the line...
[25:37.660 --> 25:38.900]  That's 26 is beating.
[25:39.160 --> 25:40.120]  There's so many of them.
[25:41.100 --> 25:41.940]  It's flesh soup.
[25:42.840 --> 25:52.600]  When the lines are on hook, okay, the circuitry between the two trunks are both whistling 2600 at each other.
[25:52.700 --> 25:56.980]  The reason why you can't hear them is because the filters are kicked in.
[25:57.160 --> 26:07.120]  However, in this particular instance, we've got so many trunks stacking that some of that 2600 sometimes will leak through and sometimes you'll hear it, but it's very faint.
[26:07.120 --> 26:12.080]  And this actually caused a rather interesting thing in my case.
[26:12.480 --> 26:20.320]  When I was actually in court, the phone company was claiming that I was using electricity in the phone line.
[26:20.480 --> 26:34.400]  And I brought an expert witness to testify that I was actually using less electricity than more electricity because the oscillator that was sending back the lines was really removed, so to speak.
[26:34.400 --> 26:36.320]  So I was actually using less electricity.
[26:36.960 --> 26:39.760]  And, of course, the judge got really confused about that.
[26:45.490 --> 26:47.070]  You notice it's going the other way now.
[26:48.750 --> 26:49.850]  It's sort of going away.
[26:50.110 --> 26:51.730]  Before it was like coming toward you.
[26:51.950 --> 26:55.990]  Now it's going away because you're looking at it from a different perspective.
[27:00.840 --> 27:03.500]  Because each of these lines attenuates just a bit.
[27:03.860 --> 27:05.200]  And you have so many of them stacked up.
[27:10.290 --> 27:13.630]  And remember, we're dealing with mechanical equipment here, not electronic equipment.
[27:13.750 --> 27:14.810]  And that's why there's a delay.
[27:49.660 --> 27:50.060]  Okay.
[27:52.000 --> 27:53.720]  Both lines are on for the last flash.
[27:53.900 --> 27:54.640]  Let's do that again.
[27:55.580 --> 27:56.340]  Keep them both on.
[28:04.760 --> 28:06.980]  Now he's been off hook long enough to charge himself.
[28:07.340 --> 28:07.820]  So he...
[28:07.820 --> 28:08.700]  Lost the tone apply.
[28:08.860 --> 28:09.020]  Right.
[28:17.220 --> 28:18.460]  Not just a call then.
[28:19.480 --> 28:21.440]  We've already steeped long enough to charge.
[28:25.780 --> 28:28.020]  I think they're going to go for the disconnect pretty soon here.
[28:47.220 --> 28:48.380]  Back to the first line.
[28:55.100 --> 28:55.980]  Okay, go ahead and talk.
[28:56.160 --> 29:16.140]  Well, while John is now queuing up the piece de resistance, the actual shutting down of that stack of tandems, I just want to explain for those of you who may not have caught the story of, well, dare I say, my greatest exploit, getting of my area code.
[29:16.290 --> 29:18.420]  Yes, my personal area code.
[29:20.120 --> 29:23.600]  This New York City 718 split was good training.
[29:23.880 --> 29:32.780]  Because after I moved to Florida, a few years back they decided to split the 407 area code around central Florida, the Orlando area, and the area around Cape Canaveral.
[29:33.880 --> 29:35.000]  Well, that's where I live.
[29:35.140 --> 29:38.700]  I moved down there because I like to watch rockets go up and keep going up.
[29:38.920 --> 29:40.040]  It's amazing stuff.
[29:40.290 --> 29:42.620]  Yeah, we both watched the Cassini when it took off.
[29:43.080 --> 29:44.640]  And now it's already arrived.
[29:48.160 --> 29:50.480]  So they're going to split 407.
[29:51.500 --> 29:54.160]  And I look at the schedule and I have to work that night, so I didn't go.
[29:54.400 --> 29:56.320]  Well, it turned out nobody else went either.
[29:56.700 --> 30:02.700]  And when it made the papers the next day that they were going to split 407, great outcry, why they decided to have another set of hearings.
[30:03.240 --> 30:04.140]  I look at the date.
[30:04.360 --> 30:05.820]  Now, got to work that day too.
[30:06.340 --> 30:07.040]  Well, wait a minute.
[30:08.380 --> 30:11.260]  Let me at least look up on the internet and see if there's anything interesting.
[30:12.520 --> 30:14.200]  So, I'm an old phone freak.
[30:14.360 --> 30:17.520]  I know to look on the website of the North American Numbering Plan Administration.
[30:18.290 --> 30:19.580]  And I'm looking down the list.
[30:19.700 --> 30:21.140]  Now, you folks know the list.
[30:21.290 --> 30:23.790]  201 New Jersey, 202 DC, blah, blah, blah.
[30:23.940 --> 30:26.290]  And gaps marked available for geographic relief.
[30:26.550 --> 30:26.940]  Okay.
[30:27.340 --> 30:29.550]  So I'm going down the list and I see this number 321.
[30:30.480 --> 30:32.180]  Why does that sound familiar to me?
[30:32.200 --> 30:33.540]  Oh, yes.
[30:33.860 --> 30:35.640]  Now I remember why that's familiar to me.
[30:36.000 --> 30:44.280]  It's time to bring down the web browser and bring up the word processor to prepare my testimony for the Public Service Commission hearing.
[30:44.870 --> 30:48.680]  Well, I show up, I'm nervous, I'm flustered because it's just, it's so silly.
[30:48.820 --> 30:55.960]  I'm sure somebody would have come up with it, but it was the combination of Phone Freak and Space Cadet that made me come up with this idea.
[30:56.620 --> 31:07.400]  I presented it to the Public Service Commission and said, Listen, we who live around Cape Canaveral, the countdown capital of the world, we want area code 321.
[31:10.130 --> 31:11.500]  They loved the idea.
[31:12.550 --> 31:14.160]  From the get-go.
[31:14.440 --> 31:24.290]  In fact, one commissioner told me, you know, we'd love to have this kind of sugarcoating to put on the process of this split, because it's going to be hard for a lot of people, the old retirees and what have you.
[31:25.570 --> 31:31.380]  The chairman of the commission came up to me after the meeting and she thanked me very much.
[31:31.380 --> 31:42.360]  I want to thank you very much for your testimony today because we went to NANPA and we requested a list such as you presented in your testimony, and they told us it was proprietary.
[31:44.480 --> 31:46.760]  I, of course, found it on their public website.
[31:47.480 --> 31:49.400]  So how proprietary could it be?
[31:50.520 --> 31:55.550]  So I figure, I asked for it, they approved it, it must be my area code, right?
[31:55.550 --> 31:56.780]  But I share.
[31:58.900 --> 32:00.260]  You want to tell them your phone number?
[32:00.520 --> 32:00.740]  No.
[32:01.120 --> 32:01.260]  Okay.
[32:01.640 --> 32:02.200]  All right.
[32:03.160 --> 32:10.550]  This, this is the, this is the teardown of the trunk as seen from the called end.
[32:11.360 --> 32:16.520]  Not the end that call, not, not the called end, but the actual received end of the phone call.
[32:17.240 --> 32:17.680]  So...
[32:17.680 --> 32:19.520]  So the caller hung up the phone.
[32:19.940 --> 32:20.380]  Right.
[32:20.540 --> 32:24.680]  The caller hung up the phone and you are at the called end and this is what you would hear.
[32:24.680 --> 32:26.380]  What the line flashed down?
[32:28.120 --> 32:30.050]  Shorter and longer longer longer longer.
[32:40.370 --> 32:41.370]  Oh there's still...
[32:43.830 --> 32:46.870]  Okay this is when they are actually experimenting around with the flashing.
[32:52.800 --> 32:54.240]  So that wasn't the actual teardown yet?
[32:54.760 --> 32:57.180]  Yeah actually I need to queue it up just a little...
[32:57.180 --> 32:57.460]  Okay.
[33:00.540 --> 33:02.740]  Another part of the United Nations story.
[33:04.840 --> 33:09.780]  Since I used to hang out in that bookstore so often, they knew that I knew the books.
[33:10.840 --> 33:15.140]  And every once in a while, when I'd be in there, not even at the ITU section, but someplace else, they would come up to me with a customer.
[33:15.240 --> 33:19.540]  Oh, excuse me, sir, but we have a customer who needs to know that to find this information.
[33:19.760 --> 33:20.580]  Oh, no problem.
[33:20.900 --> 33:25.760]  I'd go over, let's see, it's going to be in this facility, and yeah, there's your information for you.
[33:25.980 --> 33:27.300]  And I would sell the book for them.
[33:27.600 --> 33:29.620]  So it was a very symbiotic relationship.
[33:30.460 --> 33:32.480]  And it's one of the reasons they let me hang out, I'm sure.
[33:32.740 --> 33:36.300]  They do not sell those publications in the UN Bookstore anymore.
[33:37.420 --> 33:44.540]  But you can just go to ITU.INT and look over the publications they do have available.
[33:44.620 --> 33:46.440]  That stuff is publicly available for sale.
[33:48.280 --> 33:49.720]  Okay, I'm ready here.
[33:49.960 --> 33:54.000]  This next part of the tape here talks about what is called Flash Forward.
[33:55.120 --> 34:00.380]  Okay, this is basically a signal... I'll just let the narrator explain this.
[34:00.380 --> 34:07.600]  And I believe that the Flash Forward will follow this, and this would be the last part of this section here.
[34:07.800 --> 34:14.120]  And then there's another section on here of a much, much bigger stack that you just got to hear.
[34:14.520 --> 34:19.900]  The setup of the stack had actually not been made on this tape, so it had not been recorded.
[34:22.320 --> 34:25.080]  I guess we should describe what he means by Flash Forward.
[34:25.280 --> 34:27.280]  I guess the proper term is Ring Forward, isn't it?
[34:27.280 --> 34:28.780]  Normally that's what they called it, yes.
[34:29.080 --> 34:36.680]  Which is to send a short burst to 2600, and with any luck, these are all toll tandem, so they tended to want to repeat the signal along the way.
[34:36.680 --> 34:38.680]  Which makes a wonderful sound.
[34:38.940 --> 34:42.060]  Now, in the actual network, the Ring Forward was used for...
[34:42.060 --> 34:53.160]  To signal an operator, if they had put up a connection, and you needed it back on the line, your local operator could hit a ring key, which would send a little chirp of 2600 down the line.
[34:53.160 --> 34:57.400]  And that would make something flash where the connection was.
[34:57.600 --> 35:03.000]  And when you get a connection this long, and you ring forward, assuming that it passes it along, which this one does...
[35:03.000 --> 35:03.420]  Oh, yeah.
[35:03.580 --> 35:11.580]  You get to hear that little burst of forward on-hook being sent, you know, just very slowly, one, then the next, then the next, then the next, all the way down.
[35:11.780 --> 35:13.080]  Yep, just cascading down.
[35:13.240 --> 35:13.900]  You can count the links.
[35:14.120 --> 35:19.200]  And he does that with the tape recorder on, you know, first on the calling line, then the called line.
[35:35.500 --> 35:38.360]  I want to explain a little bit more about what you're hearing there.
[35:39.100 --> 35:50.600]  What you're hearing there in this flash forward is, the calling end basically sends a very short burst of 2600 to the called end.
[35:50.920 --> 36:06.020]  And the reason why there's such a delay between the different click, click, click, click, clicks you see there, is that the, is as it goes down the chain of switching tandems, the, before the, the second tandem can react, it's got to get the flash forward from the first tandem.
[36:06.380 --> 36:15.480]  And the second then reacts to the third, the third reacts to the fourth, but the third, the second, the third can't go to the fourth until it receives this acknowledgement signal back.
[36:15.480 --> 36:21.800]  And that's why there's such a delay between each of these little ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching, as it crawls down the trunks.
[36:33.990 --> 36:45.140]  And this is instigated by a quick burst of 2600, which is not long enough to disconnect the call, but long enough to flash forward.
[36:52.830 --> 36:56.950]  Okay, I'm gonna cue, I'm gonna get to the big stack now, I'll let Cheshire take over there.
[36:57.130 --> 36:59.910]  Okay, so I'm gonna come up with an old story to tell you while he's doing that.
[37:00.330 --> 37:01.570]  And I'm starting blank.
[37:01.790 --> 37:04.950]  So let me mention that a lot of my stories are on my little disk.
[37:05.850 --> 37:09.690]  My hyperbook, as I call it, called, Of Course There Are Secrets, They're In The Manual.
[37:12.330 --> 37:16.130]  It's all in hypertext, it's just a bunch of webpages from various of my websites.
[37:16.130 --> 37:20.570]  It's available for $15 on the internet at cheshirecatalyst.com.
[37:20.750 --> 37:26.650]  Or I'll be set up in the back in the vendor area after the talk here, and we'll have them for $15.
[37:29.910 --> 37:34.850]  Oh, I've also brought my little laptop with me with my $7 Salvation Army keyboard.
[37:35.530 --> 37:42.990]  Most of the keyboards in the Salvation Army were actually around $2, $2.50, but I decided to get the $7 keyboard, the one with the mag stripe reader.
[37:45.450 --> 37:50.150]  So I will be selling discs for $0.50 a piece, and then $0.50 a swipe.
[37:50.830 --> 37:52.670]  Find out what's really in your wallet.
[37:56.390 --> 37:57.350]  Okay, I'm back.
[37:57.450 --> 37:58.430]  This is going to be the last final.
[37:58.530 --> 38:01.750]  I'm just going to let it play to the end, because we're toward the end of the actual recording.
[38:03.530 --> 38:05.550]  And there are two voices that you hear on there.
[38:05.670 --> 38:10.990]  One voice is, his nickname is Doorbell, another one is Bill Acker, and Bill is an old, old...
[38:10.990 --> 38:12.310]  Well, he's my mentor.
[38:12.490 --> 38:13.710]  He was the one who...
[38:13.710 --> 38:26.630]  Both of us have spent just endless nights crawling through the phone network, looking through every single tandem, looking through every single TTC code we could possibly find, to find the most interesting sounds we could find in the trunks.
[38:27.430 --> 38:31.310]  And Bill also is a very good social engineer, and so is Denny.
[38:31.510 --> 38:34.890]  Denny's the blind kid who actually turned me on to phone-freaking.
[38:34.890 --> 38:37.390]  He was the one that actually had a Captain Crunch whistle.
[38:37.950 --> 38:40.530]  And he was the one, of course, that told me all about it.
[38:40.750 --> 38:44.550]  And how I got the name Captain Crunch, everybody asks me this.
[38:44.730 --> 38:52.770]  It's on my FAQ on my website, which is webcrunchers.com forward slash crunch, in case you want to know what it is.
[38:53.950 --> 38:55.990]  I still have yet to kind of clean up the website.
[38:55.990 --> 39:01.250]  I moved it over to a new server recently, and there are some links that may not be totally active yet.
[39:02.310 --> 39:05.110]  So in this last bit of the thing here, this is where they actually...
[39:05.110 --> 39:08.370]  This is an actual huge, huge tandem stack.
[39:08.530 --> 39:11.150]  This has got probably one of the biggest ones that we've ever recorded.
[39:11.870 --> 39:15.590]  And the setup was not recorded, but it sure is awesome to hear.
[39:15.730 --> 39:16.430]  I mean, it's just here.
[39:16.530 --> 39:17.790]  So I'll just let it play to the end.
[39:17.930 --> 39:21.070]  They talk a little bit more about some things, and it's pretty interesting.
[39:22.350 --> 39:22.890]  Give me a sec.
[39:30.960 --> 39:34.400]  Listen to the longest stack I could find in all of the tape libraries.
[39:34.550 --> 39:35.020]  Oh, yes.
[39:35.020 --> 39:37.940]  And try to approximately count the links.
[39:39.630 --> 39:41.590]  I should warn you that it's...
[39:41.590 --> 39:46.480]  There are a few of what I think are non-SF links in the middle of it.
[39:47.380 --> 39:48.730]  SF single frequency links.
[39:48.920 --> 39:49.820]  Do you know what the path was?
[39:49.960 --> 39:51.420]  This one he didn't record the setup.
[39:51.840 --> 39:52.090]  Ah.
[39:52.250 --> 39:54.500]  He just, you know, stacked it up and then said...
[39:54.500 --> 39:55.920]  Oh, I'd love to know where he went.
[39:56.090 --> 39:56.880]  Yeah, I would too.
[39:57.860 --> 40:00.380]  This is an amazing tandem stack.
[40:00.590 --> 40:01.090]  It's very locked.
[40:01.130 --> 40:02.590]  It's the most expensive echo chamber.
[40:03.320 --> 40:04.040]  And then my disconnect.
[40:04.670 --> 40:05.920]  Listen to the echo.
[40:06.300 --> 40:06.590]  Echo?
[40:06.960 --> 40:07.380]  Echo?
[40:07.710 --> 40:08.070]  Ben?
[40:08.400 --> 40:08.940]  How are you?
[40:09.420 --> 40:10.340]  I have my lines tied.
[40:10.840 --> 40:11.800]  Oh, this is amazing.
[40:12.380 --> 40:12.840]  Amazing?
[40:13.420 --> 40:13.820]  Okay.
[40:14.130 --> 40:14.880]  Let's flash through.
[40:15.800 --> 40:16.380]  Standby.
[40:18.050 --> 40:19.480]  We're now on the receiving end.
[40:19.840 --> 40:21.570]  Let me flash from the calling end with 26.
[40:30.170 --> 40:32.550]  Unfortunately, one of his links is not ringing forward.
[40:32.770 --> 40:34.930]  So that actually isn't going all the way down the line.
[40:35.630 --> 40:36.150]  Hold on.
[40:36.210 --> 40:36.750]  Let me do it again.
[40:44.420 --> 40:45.280]  A little longer.
[40:52.970 --> 40:53.410]  Okay.
[40:53.470 --> 40:54.450]  Let me flash this side.
[41:06.750 --> 41:08.710]  And now, here's the disconnect.
[41:23.490 --> 41:23.930]  Wow.
[41:26.150 --> 41:27.010]  There you have it.
[41:27.310 --> 41:30.010]  A recording of the biggest tandem stack we've been able to do.
[41:30.010 --> 41:34.830]  Let me talk a little bit more about some of the other tandem stacking technologies that we were involved in.
[41:35.950 --> 41:47.110]  That, of course, was called a tandem stack using number one crossbar tandems, which allowed the possibility of dropping you into the trunks as was described by the narrator at the very beginning.
[41:47.830 --> 41:54.010]  Other ways of tandem stacking which is not quite as effective as this was the use of guard band.
[41:54.270 --> 41:56.030]  Let me explain what guard band does.
[41:56.210 --> 41:59.910]  I'll probably take about three to five minutes kind of explaining this.
[41:59.910 --> 42:01.870]  Because I think this is a really interesting concept.
[42:02.290 --> 42:05.670]  I was the actual pioneer in this particular technology.
[42:06.210 --> 42:09.250]  I was at the time doing a lot of audio analysis.
[42:09.250 --> 42:17.070]  I was like an engineer and I was doing things with audio and bandwidth and spectral analysis of sound and all this other happy stuff.
[42:17.070 --> 42:26.710]  One of the things I noticed is that the audio link of a telephone line has a very sharp cutoff after 3,000 hertz.
[42:27.210 --> 42:31.730]  The audio bandwidth of the telephone was flat from 300 to 3,000.
[42:32.150 --> 42:36.050]  Immediately after 3,000 it had a very sharp drop off.
[42:36.050 --> 42:46.310]  And the reason for that was that the reason that these audio channels had to be very precise is because they were backed up against other audio channels and had to have a very sharp cutoff at the end.
[42:46.710 --> 42:53.230]  It turns out that 3,200 hertz it's possible to send sound through 3,200.
[42:53.230 --> 42:58.810]  Now, 2,600 alone in the phone is what's required to dump a call off.
[42:58.930 --> 43:05.450]  If you have any other frequencies present along with 2,600, it won't drop off.
[43:05.690 --> 43:07.370]  This is called guard band.
[43:07.510 --> 43:15.210]  And the reason for that is a lot of people's voices have 2,600 in their voices, especially someone with a very high-pitched voice.
[43:15.530 --> 43:31.010]  And at the very beginning when this system was developed, they ran into problems in field testing and a lot of times these calls got disconnected prematurely because the audio from a human voice would be long enough for the equipment to trip you off.
[43:31.110 --> 43:37.730]  So if there's any other frequencies present in the band, like normal speech, this would not disconnect you.
[43:37.810 --> 43:39.350]  This is what is called guard band.
[43:39.870 --> 43:44.250]  So what we're able to do is send 3,200 along with 2,600.
[43:44.950 --> 43:51.830]  And what we'd do when we blew it off or disconnected it with 2,600, we'd also pass 3,200 along with the 2,600.
[43:52.830 --> 44:05.030]  By the time it went from the first hop to the second hop, the 3,200 got attenuated down below the threshold required for the 2,600 to actually trip the circuits.
[44:05.230 --> 44:11.530]  So the 3,200 actually allowed the 2,600 to pass from the first link to the second link.
[44:11.530 --> 44:14.630]  And then the second link would drop off and go chink, chink.
[44:15.070 --> 44:19.170]  And then you'd pump up the volume of the 3,200 just a tad more.
[44:19.350 --> 44:21.570]  Go to the next link and it'd go chink, chink, chink.
[44:21.770 --> 44:26.130]  And you kept doing that and you kept bringing down or bringing up the 3,200.
[44:26.330 --> 44:27.370]  It would attenuate down.
[44:27.650 --> 44:29.230]  It'd go to a certain point.
[44:29.370 --> 44:35.530]  Afterwards, the 3,200 became so high in amplitude that you got a lot of intermodulation distortion along with it.
[44:35.530 --> 44:37.530]  And that was your real limiting factor.
[44:37.750 --> 44:42.870]  But this would never work when you're using an acoustical coupler connection to the phone line.
[44:43.010 --> 44:52.550]  This would only work if you were actually directly connected to the phone line and can directly couple the audio into the phone line at reasonably high volumes in order to do this.
[44:52.710 --> 44:54.250]  This was called guard banding.
[44:54.370 --> 44:57.210]  And it allowed some really, really interesting hacks.
[44:57.650 --> 44:59.230]  Because here's what happens.
[44:59.450 --> 45:04.690]  A lot of times when you're out in a really, really suburban area, you get your operator.
[45:05.130 --> 45:08.530]  And your connection to the operator is 2,600.
[45:08.990 --> 45:13.310]  So you can't even get your 2,600 through the trunk without the 3,200.
[45:13.770 --> 45:19.510]  So you guard band through that point, get past the operator, and get from the next trunk to the next trunk.
[45:19.630 --> 45:27.750]  And that allowed phone freaking and blue boxing to work on these old, on these really urban areas, which normally would not be allowed.
[45:27.750 --> 45:36.030]  because what happened in 1972, 1973, the phone company started centralizing everything.
[45:36.390 --> 45:46.450]  Instead of having these small little boat towns have their own operators, what they would do is the operators for these small towns would actually be located in the nearest big city.
[45:46.770 --> 45:51.730]  For instance, Ridgecrest, California, out in the desert was a main hub.
[45:51.730 --> 45:57.890]  And then there's this other little town called Ballarat, which is down near Death Valley, was the hub town.
[45:58.070 --> 46:00.150]  And it used to have operators, but not anymore.
[46:00.330 --> 46:03.710]  So when I picked up the pay phone, I would pick up the operator.
[46:03.770 --> 46:06.230]  The operator would be in Ridgecrest, 70 miles away.
[46:06.370 --> 46:14.490]  And that link, of course, was 2,600, which meant blue boxes couldn't be done from that phone without actually using the 3,200 guard band.
[46:14.490 --> 46:16.470]  And that's sort of how that all worked.
[46:19.330 --> 46:20.330]  Anyway, let's see.
[46:20.350 --> 46:20.570]  Time for questions?
[46:20.790 --> 46:22.230]  Yeah, I think it's time for questions.
[46:22.790 --> 46:23.630]  Time for questions.
[46:24.290 --> 46:24.690]  Sure, why not?
[46:24.690 --> 46:27.010]  And I believe there's a microphone right here in the middle of the aisle.
[46:27.110 --> 46:29.450]  And of course, first up is Rebel.
[46:31.110 --> 46:33.790]  Rebel, you do have a reputation to maintain, and you're maintaining it well.
[46:34.430 --> 46:34.930]  What, Rebel?
[46:36.110 --> 46:36.690]  Your question.
[46:37.750 --> 46:41.950]  I remember you were talking about the old phone things.
[46:41.950 --> 46:46.230]  I remember the commercials of the touch-tone races with the dial phone and everything.
[46:46.470 --> 46:49.410]  I remember when my parents had to put a lock on the phone.
[46:49.570 --> 46:54.510]  When Kevin Mitnick was speaking, I remember when he was talking about the phone that had to be taken out of his house.
[46:54.670 --> 46:57.930]  It reminded me of when my parents had to put a lock on the phone.
[46:58.090 --> 46:59.270]  Rebel, your question, please.
[47:00.610 --> 47:01.610]  I really didn't...
[47:01.610 --> 47:02.030]  Let's see.
[47:02.070 --> 47:02.810]  What is my question?
[47:03.670 --> 47:04.070]  Okay.
[47:09.070 --> 47:13.310]  Well, for those of you too young to remember, and it looks like there's very few of those here.
[47:13.890 --> 47:19.630]  On rotary dials, people used to put a lock in the number one, so you couldn't turn the dial past one...
[47:19.630 --> 47:21.510]  My parents used to put it in the number three.
[47:22.410 --> 47:23.030]  Thank you, Rebel.
[47:23.210 --> 47:24.610]  I have a song to play.
[47:25.650 --> 47:27.230]  Should I play it now or should I play it later?
[47:28.110 --> 47:31.690]  The way to get past that, of course, was to just hit the hook switch the number of times...
[47:31.690 --> 47:32.570]  Yeah, that's the other thing I wanted to mention.
[47:32.710 --> 47:38.290]  That's the way I, when they put the lock on, on the three or whatever number, I just flash phone.
[47:38.390 --> 47:38.930]  Very good, Rebel.
[47:39.030 --> 47:39.690]  Thank you very much.
[47:39.690 --> 47:40.670]  It's time for the next question.
[47:46.150 --> 47:47.850]  We use the crank on our phone.
[47:49.090 --> 47:50.370]  Oh, by the way...
[47:50.370 --> 47:52.390]  Somebody mentioned that they use the crank on their phone.
[47:52.390 --> 47:54.190]  I wanted to mention about crank phones a minute.
[47:54.610 --> 47:59.490]  In one of my phone trips, we went to a place called Grasshopper Junction, Arizona.
[48:00.110 --> 48:06.170]  And in this little town, there was this little rest stop way out in the middle of nowhere, and it actually had a crank phone.
[48:06.410 --> 48:08.650]  A real, authentic crank phone.
[48:08.650 --> 48:09.750]  And you picked up the phone.
[48:10.050 --> 48:11.850]  It was a potato masher kind of phone.
[48:11.930 --> 48:13.150]  It had this little earpiece like this.
[48:13.310 --> 48:17.850]  You put it to your ear, and you spoke into the little speaker that come out like I'm doing it now in the microphone.
[48:19.070 --> 48:21.890]  And I thought, gee, let's see if I can blue box from here.
[48:23.910 --> 48:26.630]  So I turned the crank, summoned the operator.
[48:27.110 --> 48:29.570]  And yes, indeedy, it was 2600 to the operator.
[48:29.690 --> 48:34.730]  But the mouthpiece on the phone was of reasonably good quality to actually take the blue box tones.
[48:34.890 --> 48:39.510]  And I actually was able to make a blue box call to the UK on a crank phone.
[48:41.910 --> 48:42.870]  Your question, sir.
[48:44.750 --> 48:51.930]  I'm wondering, does any of this equipment, is it still in use, be it, you know, other countries or in a museum somewhere?
[48:52.770 --> 49:05.690]  It used to be that companies like Ericsson and Siemens, that when they took them out of their northern Europe cities, they would sell them to third world countries because they kept very good maintenance on them in their home countries and such.
[49:05.690 --> 49:12.450]  When they got to the less developed nations, maintenance wasn't quite so good.
[49:12.590 --> 49:15.170]  But they did move them around and...
[49:15.170 --> 49:19.990]  Yeah, Central American countries like I think police had using these in-band signaling.
[49:20.170 --> 49:24.370]  But I don't believe that C1 signaling is actually in existence anymore.
[49:24.370 --> 49:28.050]  What you've heard, basically, was equipment that does not exist anymore.
[49:28.510 --> 49:29.530]  It's very rare.
[49:29.790 --> 49:33.590]  And, of course, thank goodness this was actually recorded for posterity.
[49:33.710 --> 49:35.250]  And I'm able to bring it to you tonight.
[49:35.690 --> 49:38.110]  Is it like Smithsonian or anything like that?
[49:38.490 --> 49:39.030]  What's that?
[49:39.470 --> 49:40.470]  Like the Smithsonian?
[49:41.830 --> 49:42.190]  Yeah.
[49:42.690 --> 49:43.710]  Actually, you know, I was...
[49:43.710 --> 49:47.690]  Many people have come up to me and asked me, you know, why don't you set up a phone freak museum?
[49:49.130 --> 49:55.110]  And I talked to the people at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, and these guys are pretty hip to the idea.
[49:55.290 --> 49:56.830]  And I just haven't had a chance to really do that.
[49:56.890 --> 49:58.990]  I can get myself a number one crossbar switch.
[49:58.990 --> 50:08.690]  And I'd probably get myself a TSPS operator console, and perhaps even one of the old cool cord board consoles to actually set something up like that.
[50:08.830 --> 50:13.370]  I have seen where some independent telcos, where they've abandoned a central office.
[50:13.850 --> 50:16.130]  The Telephone Pioneers of America have set up museums.
[50:16.870 --> 50:20.070]  I'm not sure where to find a web link to find those, but I will try and set that up.
[50:20.070 --> 50:22.910]  I think Phone Losers of America may have had links to some of those.
[50:23.910 --> 50:24.510]  Yes, sir.
[50:24.890 --> 50:24.970]  Okay.
[50:25.370 --> 50:26.610]  Two questions, actually.
[50:26.850 --> 50:33.410]  First of all, when you stacked up the tandems, did this ever show up on a network control center of AT&T?
[50:33.610 --> 50:48.530]  And the second question is, with a lot of the 800 numbers being rooted, like for tech support, being rooted overseas, is there any possibility of some form of boxing still occurring on these overseas 800 numbers?
[50:48.790 --> 50:49.530]  I'll sit down.
[50:49.530 --> 50:50.510]  Okay.
[50:51.210 --> 50:57.410]  The 800 numbers, this particular, these particular calls here was not actually placed over an 800 number.
[50:57.610 --> 51:02.370]  These were actually paid for calls, that they called into a distant city.
[51:02.470 --> 51:06.490]  And this particular call was actually not made for free, I might add.
[51:06.590 --> 51:14.030]  It was just basically calling from one connection to another connection to show the operation of a number one crossbar.
[51:15.010 --> 51:25.450]  It wasn't until much, much later, I'd say probably close to five or six years later, until the time that 800 numbers were starting to terminate in foreign countries.
[51:25.690 --> 51:43.590]  There was a time I remember that Bulgaria and parts of Eastern Europe, you could go and call AT&T Direct, and you had a C5 connection to your AT&T operator, and it was possible to grab and seize a C5 trunk just by calling your local AT&T USA direct number.
[51:43.750 --> 51:46.170]  That was possible only up until just recently.
[51:46.390 --> 51:48.670]  Since that time, of course, all that equipment has gone away.
[51:48.670 --> 51:49.650]  Anyway, next question, please.
[51:50.270 --> 51:52.310]  Does any of this old equipment still exist?
[51:52.450 --> 51:55.630]  Like, I'm looking for like a step switch or like a...
[51:55.630 --> 52:02.890]  I remember I was in Utah once, and I picked up the pay phone in the rest area, and I heard that old dial tone, that...
[52:03.390 --> 52:06.190]  the old-fashioned dial tone, you know, before my time.
[52:06.230 --> 52:09.010]  The one before international standards set the dial tone.
[52:09.070 --> 52:10.270]  I thought the phone was broken.
[52:11.390 --> 52:13.790]  Oh, yeah, one other thing I might want to mention.
[52:14.250 --> 52:16.310]  Back in California, well, there...
[52:16.310 --> 52:22.470]  Okay, there are two kinds of step switches that were in existence back at the time I was doing some phone hacking.
[52:22.610 --> 52:24.290]  One was in Los Gatos, California.
[52:24.290 --> 52:25.690]  It was General Telephone.
[52:25.930 --> 52:27.950]  It had a step switch.
[52:28.090 --> 52:31.770]  That had the most amazing access to a trunk I have ever seen.
[52:31.890 --> 52:39.130]  You pick up the phone, you take your finger like this, you swipe it down on the hook switch real fast, ker-clunk-plop, right into a trunk.
[52:39.130 --> 52:41.750]  How could that be any easier than that?
[52:42.190 --> 52:46.830]  And then in Pacific Telephone, they had what is called Pacific Step.
[52:47.450 --> 53:10.130]  For that, in that, you would dial part of an area code like 2-1, and this would only work if you didn't have to dial 1 for the area code, which at that time in the Bay Area, 415 and 408, were actually two different area codes, but you can call from one area to the next without the area code because the prefixes were not overlapping.
[53:11.090 --> 53:12.530]  Okay, I think we're getting pretty close.
[53:12.610 --> 53:14.210]  We're at the end of our time.
[53:14.650 --> 53:15.350]  Rebel, I'm sorry.
[53:15.650 --> 53:16.950]  You've gotten the last word.
[53:17.730 --> 53:19.090]  Does anybody have any more?
[53:19.190 --> 53:20.110]  One real quick question?
[53:20.130 --> 53:21.490]  No, we don't even have time for that at this point.
[53:21.590 --> 53:22.690]  We have to go for the next session.
[53:22.870 --> 53:23.510]  How about the song?
[53:23.690 --> 53:24.790]  Can we end with the song?
[53:24.890 --> 53:26.610]  Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.
[53:26.850 --> 53:27.210]  Thank you.
[53:27.210 --> 53:27.950]  End with the song.
[53:35.460 --> 53:37.040]  Coming up next, we have lock picking.
[53:38.200 --> 53:39.960]  These guys can tear apart any lock.