Secrets of the Little Blue Box (1971)

Hehe, I blueboxed like a demon when I was 14 (1994). I was led astray by a guy who I traded C64 software with. The box was my Commodore 64's soundchip and a piece of software. You'd ring an overseas 0800 number (Barbados for instance) and 'break' the line with a 2600 tone. Then, you'd issue a series of other tones which were the USA number you wanted to phone.

I got free phone calls from the UK to USA for a while, and all I did was listen to a band's Dial-a-Song and chat lines. It was fun though.

The best thing is, I never got caught...

The ability to call the USA from the UK this way, ended in about 1996.

Phreaking docs are required reading for any honestly inquisitive hacker.

I believe this is the article that inspired Jobs and Wozniak in their first joint venture.

I never had a blue box, but I would have loved to have had one as a child.

I did once manage to hack a pulse dial phone into making a call by tapping the receiver disconnect button, which is pretty tame by comparison, but it seemed tremendously exciting at the time.

I think I also used to dial random 3-digit numbers starting with * or # just to see what would happen.