Exploding the phone : the untold story of the teenagers and outlaws who hacked Ma Bell / Phil Lapsley.
2013
HD9697.T454 A44 2013 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
Items
Details
Title
Exploding the phone : the untold story of the teenagers and outlaws who hacked Ma Bell / Phil Lapsley.
Author
Lapsley, Phil, 1965-
Edition
1st ed.
ISBN
080212061X
9780802120618
9780802120618
Imprint
New York : Grove Press ; [Berkeley, Calif.] : Distributed by Publishers Group West, c2013.
Language
English
Description
xvi, 431, [16] p. of plates : ill., map ; 24 cm.
Call Number
HD9697.T454 A44 2013
Dewey Decimal Classification
384.0657/3
Summary
Describes how "phone phreaks" learned how to make illicit but technologically innovative free phone calls and shared the technique, and places the process in the development of telecommunications and the behavior of the telephone monopoly.
Before smartphones, before the Internet and before the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell's revolutionary "harmonic telegraph," by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. Unfortunately for the telephone company, the network has a billion-dollar flaw. And once people discovered it, things would never the be the same. Phil Lapsley's Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T's monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell's Achilles' heel. Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of "phone phreaks" who turned the network into the electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, and the counterculture movement that argued you should rip off the phone company to fight against the war in Vietnam...AT&T responded with "Greenstar"...The FBI fought back, too...Phone phreaking exploded into the popular culture, with famous actors, musicians, and investors caught with "blue boxes," many of them built by two young phone phreaks named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak...The product of extensive original research, including exclusive interviews and declassified government documents, Exploding the Phone is a captivating, ground-breaking work about an important part of our cultural and technological history -- Publisher's description.
Before smartphones, before the Internet and before the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell's revolutionary "harmonic telegraph," by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. Unfortunately for the telephone company, the network has a billion-dollar flaw. And once people discovered it, things would never the be the same. Phil Lapsley's Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T's monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell's Achilles' heel. Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of "phone phreaks" who turned the network into the electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, and the counterculture movement that argued you should rip off the phone company to fight against the war in Vietnam...AT&T responded with "Greenstar"...The FBI fought back, too...Phone phreaking exploded into the popular culture, with famous actors, musicians, and investors caught with "blue boxes," many of them built by two young phone phreaks named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak...The product of extensive original research, including exclusive interviews and declassified government documents, Exploding the Phone is a captivating, ground-breaking work about an important part of our cultural and technological history -- Publisher's description.
Note
Map on endpapers.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 339-406) and index.
Record Appears in
On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
All Resources
Table of Contents
Fine arts 13
Birth of a playground
Cat and canary
The largest machine in the world
Blue box
"Some people collect stamps"
Headache
Blue box bookies
Little Jojo learns to whistle
Bill Acker learns to play the flute
The phone freaks of America
The law of unintended consequences
Counterculture
Busted
Pranks
The story of a war
A little bit stupid
Snitch
Crunched
Twilight
Nightfall.
Birth of a playground
Cat and canary
The largest machine in the world
Blue box
"Some people collect stamps"
Headache
Blue box bookies
Little Jojo learns to whistle
Bill Acker learns to play the flute
The phone freaks of America
The law of unintended consequences
Counterculture
Busted
Pranks
The story of a war
A little bit stupid
Snitch
Crunched
Twilight
Nightfall.