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Phone Phreaks
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term ''phreak'' is a sensational spelling of the word ''freak'' with the ''ph-'' from ''phone'', and may also refer to the use of various audio frequencies to manipulate a phone system. ''Phreak'', ''phreaker'', or ''phone phreak'' are names used for and by individuals who participate in phreaking. The term first referred to groups who had reverse engineered the system of tones used to route long-distance calls. By re-creating these tones, phreaks could switch calls from the phone handset, allowing free calls to be made around the world. To ease the creation of these tones, electronic tone generators known as blue boxes became a staple of the phreaker community. This community included future Apple Inc. cofounders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The blue box er ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slang
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception. Etymology of the word ''slang'' In its earliest attested use (1756), the word ''slang'' referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it meant "impertinence, abusive language". The origin of the word is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Box (phreaking)
Black boxes were devices which, when attached to home phones, allowed all incoming calls to be received without charge to the caller. The black box (as distinguished from blue boxes and red boxes) was a small electronic circuit, usually a resistor or zener diode in series with the line. It relied on (now-obsolete) telephone exchanges controlled by mechanical relays. These exchanges used a relay to detect a drop in line voltage (usually to less than -10V off-hook, compared to -48V when on-hook) to begin billing for a call; a separate relay controlled ringing on the line. The black box placed a resistor in series with the line, so that the off-hook voltage was closer to -36V: just enough to stop the ringing, but not enough to trigger billing. A bypass capacitor was often added to prevent the device from attenuating AC signals such as transmitted voice.http://www.textfiles.com/phreak/BOXES/black A call originating from a telephone fitted with a black box would still be charged for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cap'n Crunch
Cap'n Crunch is a maize, corn and oat breakfast cereal manufactured by Quaker Oats Company, a subsidiary of PepsiCo since 2001. After introducing the original cereal in 1963, marketed simply as ''Cap'n Crunch'', Quaker Oats has since introduced numerous flavors and seasonal variations, some for a limited time—and currently offers a Cap'n Crunch product lining, product line. The original Cap'n Crunch cereal was developed to recall a recipe of brown sugar and butter over rice. It was one of the first cereals to use an oil coating to deliver its flavoring, which required an innovative baking process. The taste has been described as similar to the UK and Ireland cereal Golden Nuggets. Product history Pamela Low, a flavorist at Arthur D. Little, developed the original Cap'n Crunch flavor in 1963—recalling a recipe of brown sugar and butter her grandmother Luella Low served over rice at her home in Derry, New Hampshire, Derry, New Hampshire. Low created the flavor coating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Draper
John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch, or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phreaking, phone phreak. He is a widely known figure within the computer programming world and the Security hacker, hacker and security community, and generally lives a nomadic lifestyle. Following the emergence of the Me Too movement in 2017, allegations against him dating back decades surfaced in media reports and in social media posts concerning claims of inappropriate sexual behavior. Draper denied any sexual intent but did not address all of the allegations directly. Early life Draper is the son of a United States Air Force engineer. As a child, he built a home radio station from discarded military components. He was frequently bullied in school and briefly received psychological treatment. After taking college courses, Draper enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1964. While stationed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Recorder (musical Instrument)
The recorder is a family of woodwind musical instruments in the group known as ''internal duct flutes'': flutes with a whistle mouthpiece, also known as fipple flutes. A recorder can be distinguished from other duct flutes by the presence of a thumb-hole for the upper hand and seven finger-holes: three for the upper hand and four for the lower. It is the most prominent duct flute in the western classical tradition. Recorders are made in various sizes with names and compasses roughly corresponding to various vocal ranges. The sizes most commonly in use today are the soprano (also known as descant, lowest note C5), alto (also known as treble, lowest note F4), tenor (lowest note C4), and bass (lowest note F3). Recorders were traditionally constructed from wood or ivory. Modern professional instruments are almost invariably of wood, often boxwood; student and scholastic recorders are commonly of molded plastic. The recorders' internal and external proportions vary, but the bore i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano Key Frequencies
This is a list of the fundamental frequencies in hertz (cycles per second) of the keys of a modern 88-key standard or 108-key extended piano in twelve-tone equal temperament, with the 49th key, the fifth A (called A4), tuned to 440 Hz (referred to as A440). Since every octave is made of twelve steps and since a jump of one octave doubles the frequency (for example, the fifth A is 440 Hz and the sixth A is 880 Hz), each successive pitch is derived by multiplying (ascending) or dividing (descending) the frequency of the previous pitch by the twelfth root of two (approximately 1.059463). For example, to get the frequency one semitone up from A4 (A4), multiply 440 by the twelfth root of two. To go from A4 to B4 (up one whole tone, or two semitones), multiply 440 twice by the twelfth root of two (or once by the sixth root of two, approximately 1.122462). To go from A4 to C5 (which is a minor third), multiply 440 three times by the twelfth root of two (or once by the fourth root of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Absolute Pitch
Absolute pitch (AP), often called perfect pitch, is a rare ability of a person to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone. AP may be demonstrated using linguistic labeling ("naming" a note), associating mental imagery with the note, or sensorimotor responses. For example, an AP possessor can accurately reproduce a heard tone on a musical instrument without "hunting" for the correct pitch. The frequency of AP in the general population is not known. A proportion of 1 in 10,000 is widely reported, but not supported by evidence; a 2019 review indicated a prevalence of at least 4% amongst music students. Generally, absolute pitch implies some or all of these abilities, achieved without a reference tone: * Identify by name individual pitches played on various instruments. * Name the key of a given piece of tonal music. * Identify and name all the tones of a given chord or other tonal mass. * Name the pitches of common everyday sounds such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joybubbles
Joybubbles ( – ), born Josef Carl Engressia Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operator tone also used by blue box phreaking devices. Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of "172 or something". Joybubbles died at his Minneapolis home on . According to his death certificate, he died of natural causes with congestive heart failure as a contributing condition. Whistler As a five-year-old, Engressia discovered he could dial phone numbers by clicking the hang-up switch rapidly ("tapping"), and at the age of 7 he accidentally discovered that whistling at certain frequencies could activate phone switches. A student at the University of South Florida in the late 1960s, he was given the nickname "Whistler" due to his ability to place free long-distance phone calls by whistling the proper tones with his mouth. After a Canadian opera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2600 Hz
A blue box is an electronic device that produces tones used to generate the in-band signaling tones formerly used within the North American long-distance telephone network to send line status and called number information over voice circuits. This allowed the user, referred to as a "phreaker", to surreptitiously place long-distance calls that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of the phone network. First developed in the 1960s and used by a small phreaker community, the introduction of low-cost microelectronics in the early 1970s greatly simplified these devices to the point where they could be constructed by anyone reasonably competent with a soldering iron or breadboard construction. Soon after, models of relatively low quality were being offered fully assembled, but these generally required tinkering on the part of the user to keep operational. An exceptio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tone Dialing
Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed in the Bell System in the United States, and became known under the trademark Touch-Tone for use in push-button telephones supplied to telephone customers, starting in 1963. DTMF is standardized as ITU-T Recommendation Q.23. It is also known in the UK as ''MF4''. The Touch-Tone system using a telephone keypad gradually replaced the use of rotary dial and has become the industry standard for landline and mobile service. Other multi-frequency systems are used for internal signaling within the telephone network. Multifrequency signaling Before the development of DTMF, telephone numbers were dialed by users with a loop-disconnect (LD) signaling, more commonly known as pulse dialing (dial pulse, DP) in the United States. It functions by int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telephone Switches
telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital systems to establish telephone calls between subscribers. In historical perspective, telecommunication terms have been used with different semantics over time. The term ''telephone exchange'' is often used synonymously with ''central office'', a Bell System term. Often, a ''central office'' is defined as a building used to house the inside plant equipment of potentially several telephone exchanges, each serving a certain geographical area. Such an area has also been referred to as the exchange or exchange area. In North America, a central office location may also be identified as a ''wire center'', designating a facility to which a telephone is connected and obtains dial tone. For business and billing purposes, telecommunication carriers defin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundred years from its creation in 1877 until its antitrust breakup in 1983. The system of companies was often colloquially called Ma Bell (as in "Mother Bell"), as it held a vertical monopoly over telecommunication products and services in most areas of the United States and Canada. At the time of the breakup of the Bell System in the early 1980s, it had assets of $150 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ) and employed over one million people. Ever since the 1910s, American antitrust regulators had been observing and accusing the Bell System of abusing its monopoly power, and had brought legal action multiple times over the decades, until in 1974 the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against Be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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