Quote of the Day

From HeadwatersNews

"I ran a business before I ran the business of the state of Montana. And I like running a business, not getting calls from somebody telling me I'm off to some place to do something else."

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, responding to Colorado U.S. Ken Salazar's suggestion President-elect Barack Obama select either Schweitzer or Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal as his interior secretary.
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
(AP)

How Phone Phreaks Launched Hacking...

and started social engineering.

The five video series below is from ca 2000 and tells the story of Capn Crunch and his Blue Box and the development of phone phreaking culture. There was a natural progression from phreaking the phone system to hacking massive corporate computers. Watch the videos to see how John Draper, aka Capn Crunch, was the hero of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs and their origins as hackers, and the origins of social engineering. This social behavior, using impersonal technology to manipulate personal behaviors, is manifested today on the internet, especially through online social networking sites.

My parents accomplished their goal of redirecting my behavior in their own inimitable way by convincing me to become one of the first teenage male operators in over 75 years. I had progressed from "playing with the phone" as a kid to an adolescent "breaking into the phone" and that could lead to serious consequences. So...I never got very far as a phone phreak because suddenly I virtually had the keys to the kingdom when I sat at the old cord switchboard where I learned and legitimately used all the codes on a regular basis. As heavily monitored as it was, it was the source of the information I was seeking.

It's amazing how much you could figure out how to reach the most far flung places across the globe, just by sitting at a lowly cordboard with plain tandem trunks, working with only a few people in the middle of the night...in a state with one area code in a Toll Center designed only for standard North American calls. With subtle inquiring questions at the right time, to gain insight and information, on how the networked was designed and worked.

What the telephone network personally meant to me was connection and communication with the big, wide world and I saw it as a big impersonal system I learned to use effectively to get out of where I was. I was intrigued by the massive network and what could be done with it to connect people by shrinking geography through telecommunications. It was the old social network and almost everything that has occurred with the internet with social interaction, online networking and connection to government and commerce, was preceded on the telephone network.

Phone phreaking had a mentality that naturally leant itself to hacking and the beginning of social engineering started on the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The evolution from the PSTN to the internet was natural and the social behaviors of the internet were already in society on the PSTN for decades.

btw...

Computer History Museum

In many ways the post WWII analog telephone system that developed has been more properly recognized by computer historians as the beginning of contemporary interaction online. It often seems telephone historians are more interested in either the progression of technology in a purely factual manner or basking in the aura of a bygone era. The fusion of the idea that the old PSTN socially networked people and was pivotal in the transition of society to the digital Information Age and the internet has yet to be fully explored by telecommunications historians.

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John Draper inspired Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs



The Blue Box
video 1 of 5


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Inventing Hacker Sensibility
Busted!
video 2 of 5


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The Counterculture of Hacking
personal computing and the transition from phreaking to hacking
video 3 of 5


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WarGames!
video 4 of 5


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Phreaking: from wireline to pc to wireless
video 5 of 5


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International Telephone Operators Video ca 1970's

You've got to love the complaint of the customer in this video about the echo on the satellite circuit. "Do I get charged extra for bouncing off this satellite?"

In that era the noise, echo and clipping was expected at times in that stage of technology. Someone hearing that today would think he had a justifiable complaint but in the 60s and 70s the tension between the customer and the operator was the customer's expectation of good quality voice (too many televised space missions) and every day reality . The frustration of the operators of that time was explaining to customer's that "this is it, this is the connection you have and this is the rate" in a patient and calm way and start timing as quickly as possible.

We had not come as far yet with the technology...

...performing that work was a unique juxtaposition of using old technology that had been adapted over decades, to access and utilize new technology that hadn't been fully developed yet. It required skill to manage an old cord switchboard whose basic design was from 1929, updated with electromechanical switching advances and mark sense computer technology...an analog world...and somehow get satellite to work well enough that a customer could have at least a modicum of "exclusivity of conversation." They "could hear" and "be heard," although more often than not, with effort.



The quality of this video is rough, likely due to conversion from analog to digital and with compression. It gives a pretty good idea of what it was like handling calls in the AT&T International Operating Centers in the late 60's and early 70's. This appears to be in the Manhattan IOC where the cordboards were much older and built out from the original "Overseas Operator" centers. Manhattan and Oakland at one time had the higher call volumes due to having access to the majority of unique dedicated circuits.

The other IOCs were located in Montreal, White Plains, Pittsburgh, Springfield, Denver and Jacksonville. Springfield, Denver and Jacksonvlle were new centers built to handle the volume by placing operators where there were new Number 4 ESS Toll switches being placed. The majority of the call volume was handling calls that could be key pulsed by the operator using the International Dialing Codes on a North American tandem trunk. There were additional reasons for locatons, for example MARISAT began communcations service in 1976 and Jacksonville was atmospherically deal to handle High Seas on the Atlantic Ocean.

In the Jacksonville IOC the cordboards were actually fairly new, reconditioned standard Western Electric cord switchboards pulled out of a Toll Center that was closed somewhere. They were installed in the early 70s in four units of the IOC and the beautiful wood paneling was painted over with colors of that era (different color for each unit) with murals on the walls. It would look very dated now although the idea was to make the building as modern and forward looking as possible in the most cost effective way.

The Springfield, Jacksonville and Denver centers had been built to meet the rapidly growing demand for international calling. Their primary function was to process calls on North American tandem trunks (for example the new 4 ESS Toll Switch in Jacksonville) that would soon be handled by IDDD (International Direct Distance Dialing). The operators were processing volumes of calls by in effect dialing IDDD for the customers on station-to-station calls since the IDDD had not been rolled out on even a small scale in addition to the person, collect, card, coin, hotel and third-party billed calls. The original design was to then convert these centers to International Service Position Systems (ISPS) in these more remote and lower wage cost centers.

No one correctly predicted the demise of the Bell System, Divestiture and later the internet...making these centers functionally moot.

seizing a trunk in USA for posterity

This is an interesting video "seizing a trunk in USA for posterity" using Skype in the great tradition of phone phreaking "back in the day."

CenturyTel to Buy Embarq For More than $5 Billion in Stock

If you know the history behind these two formerly Independent telcos and how they became what they are today (including a new formula-ized name for one of them), this is interesting news.

From the Wall Street Journal Technical section today this comment:

"It also marks another step in the consolidation of America's traditional phone operators. Such companies are under consistent threat from wireless and cable-television operators. That has made efficiency all the more important for CenturyTel and Embarq, which run phone operations in 25 states and 18 states, respectively."

FierceTelecom's article stated:

"The deal will involve Embarq shareholders receiving 1.37 shares of Centurytel stock for each share of Embarq stock they own, resulting in a combined entity in which Embarq shareholders "are expected to own approximately 66 percent and CenturyTel shareholders are expected to own approximately 34 percent," a press release said. The deal price represents 36 percent value of Embarq's Friday closing stock price.

Glen F. Post III, CenturyTel's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said in the press release that joining the two companies will accelerate the strategic plans of both. Telco consolidation at the independent level has been expected for many months, though the credit crisis and macro-economics conditions were seen as freezing progress toward such deals."

In a FierceTelecom article Dan O'Shea goes on to write:

"CenturyTel's bid to acquire Embarq is surprising on at least a few levels."..."This is an intriguing deal, and more details--as well as more questions--are sure to emerge in the days ahead. "

Yes indeed...the industry landscape and the names change but the direction remains largely the same.

The First Male Operator in the Bell System

...well officially anyway.

Rick Wehmhoefer was the first male to be hired as a genuine AT&T operator after a class action suit was settled. In reality there were those of us hired prior to that, mostly high school and college students working as part-time operators, when the job was still openly considered a "woman's job." Our purpose was to help AT&T prove they did hire "non-traditional" operators and it was understood that it was only meant as a entry job for a guy until he was moved up into a "man's job." It was a different era, unless you lived in that time, it's difficult to understand how the accepted attitudes were then.

Judith Beeman's version of the official story that she wrote from interviewing Rick is on www.privateline.com.

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory5/maleoperator.htm

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This is an interesting video on the history of operators, at first teenage boys but soon replaced by women.

"Use of Women as Telephone Operators: Early History"

Only a Toll Cordboard Operator from "back in the day" would know...

Pulling the cords from the jacks
Onward to Inward to reorder
and reach my destination

My Rate and Route was slow
and finally quoted while I noted
Although I tolled and tolled
again still...

I got no answer

©2008 by J R Snyder Jr


1949 Bell System Operator Training video

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"This is a panic in the way of the fine 19th-century panics, where we all run around like headless chickens." R. JEREMY GRANTHAM, chairman of a Boston investment firm.

New York Times 10-25-08


I wonder if people in America are prepared for the very different and less forgiving economic environment we're really in for.....

Telecomms in the 1990s (as seen from the 1960s)

British Telephone video from the mid 1960's predicting future applications of th telephone network. It is pretty accurate in the concepts and framework of applications and how they would be used.

Toll Stations in Arizona

The Crown King General Store where the Toll Station payphone was until the late 70's.

Arizona was one of the last remaining states to have Toll Stations up until in the late 70's. They were primarily handled by the Phoenix cordboard although some of them had Toll Centers physically closer.

In a sense Toll Stations or "ring downs" were the original party lines, but quite unlike what party lines had evolved to by the 1970's. Modern party lines have individual 7 digit numbers, using a switch to connect the call. But ring downs need an operator. Ring downs provide telephone service to very remote areas that have no reason for a switch and that required a small 4-wire toll line with repeaters. Toll Stations or "ring downs" basically were localities that had a single 4-wire toll line going directly from a toll center to the locality, then disbursed to stations in the area on 2-wire "party lines." No local central office. They had from 1 to 8 stations and were numbered by name, e.g.: Valle (Grand Canyon) #1, #2, etc. or Organ Pipe #1, #2, etc. They usually had at least one pay station, usually at the General Store (sounds quaint these days). Very often they may have had only one station, which was the pay station itself. The General Store at Crown King, Arizona had a pay station that was one of the last Toll Stations in the Arizona and the US.

Toll Stations served remote areas and people from the community, ranchers, forest service, would place calls when near by or pick up messages left for them by the Toll Center Operator. They were the last vestige of the old "number please?" era.