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80-473: Novation's first CAT was an external 300 bit/s Bell 103 -standard modem that connected to the phone lines using an acoustic coupler . Like most other acoustically coupled modems, the CAT required the user to dial the desired number on a normal telephone, listening to the call connecting and the eventual presence of an answer tone. If the dialling was successful, the user then pressed the handset down into rubber cups on

160-412: A speaker . To operate a blue box, the user placed a long-distance telephone call , often to a number that was in the target area. Usually, this initial call would be to a 1-800 number or some other non-supervising telephone number such as directory assistance . Using a toll-free number ensured that the phone being used for access would not be billed. When the call began to ring, the caller would hold

240-428: A "ka-cheep" sound, to indicate they had noticed the signal. The line was now free on both ends to connect a call. Pulse dialing still had the problem that sending the dialed number to the remote exchange would not work due to the capacitance of the network. The tandems solved this by buffering the phone number and then converting each digit into a series of two tones, the multi-frequency signaling system, or "MF". Once

320-536: A Bell 103-compatible digital time code every minute. Bell 103 modulation is also the standard for amateur packet radio in the HF (shortwave) bands. The ITU-T V.21 communications standard defines a very similar modulation scheme. Commercial 300 baud modems typically support both formats. The American synth-pop band Information Society featured a track entitled "300bps N, 8, 1 (Terminal Mode or Ascii Download)" on their album Peace and Love, Inc. that could be decoded to

400-447: A T1 this tone mixed with other signals and caused a problem known as "quantization noise" that distorted the sound. These tones were thus filtered down on either side of the T1 connection. Thus it was difficult to blue box in such an environment, although successes are known. But blue boxing was eventually eliminated entirely for unrelated reasons. In the existing tandem-based network, completing

480-401: A Tune for a Telephone Number , which showed the musical notes for the digits on a staff and described the telephone operator's pushbuttons as a "musical keyboard". Two keys on a piano would need to be pushed simultaneously to play the tones for each digit. The illustration did not include the tone pairs for the special control signals KP and ST, although in the picture the operator's finger is on

560-559: A blue box schematic using the Intersil 8038 voltage controlled oscillator chip. Around the same time, do-it-yourself blue box kits became available. In November 1988, the CCITT (now known as ITU-T ) published recommendation Q.140 for the Signaling System No. 5 , which caused a resurgence of blue boxing by a new generation of users. In the early 1990s, blue boxing became popular with

640-480: A call required several stages communicating over the trunk line, even if the remote user never answered the call. As this process might take on the order of 10 to 15 seconds, the total wasted time across all of the trunk lines could be used to carry additional calls. To improve line usage, Bell began the development of the Number One Electronic Switching System (1ESS). This system performed all

720-529: A full-duplex Bell 212 -compatible expansion board known as the Novation 212 Expansion Card , which plugged into the Apple II motherboard as well as an existing Apple-CAT II via a ribbon cable . The card was very expensive and rarely seen. Novation also created an 'Expansion Pack' or external breakout box that would connect to the large pin header on the top middle of the card. This item allowed easy external access to

800-509: A speed of 300 bits per second . It followed the introduction of the 110 baud Bell 101 dataset in 1958. The Bell 103 modem used audio frequency-shift keying to encode data. Different pairs of audio frequencies were used by each station: Although original Bell 103 modems are no longer in common use, this encoding scheme is referred to generically as "Bell 103 modulation", and any device employing it as "Bell 103-compatible" or "a Bell 103 modem". For many years, higher-speed modems retained

880-460: A standard telephone. Some of the more famous pranksters were Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs , founders of Apple Computer . On one occasion, Wozniak dialed Vatican City and identified himself as Henry Kissinger (imitating Kissinger's German accent) and asked to speak to the Pope (who was sleeping at the time). Wozniak said in 1986: I called only to explore the phone company as a system, to learn

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960-561: A text message by holding a phone handset connected to a Bell 103 modem up to the speaker playing the track. Blue box 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. During that period, charges associated with long-distance calling were commonplace and could be significant, depending on

1040-506: Is using very short pulses of the on-hook signal, to send routing instructions. At one point in the 1960s, packages of the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal included a free gift: a small whistle that, by coincidence, generated a 2600 Hz tone when one of the whistle's two holes was covered. The phreaker John Draper adopted his nickname "Captain Crunch" from this whistle. The "toll free" 800 service

1120-408: The area code for this purpose. They would then look for a free trunk line between the two exchanges; if none were available the tandem would play the "fast busy" reorder signal to tell the user to try again later. The basic protocol for finding a free line worked by playing a 2600 Hz tone into the line whenever it was not being used. The tandems at both ends of a given trunk line did this. When

1200-460: The 1200 bit/s mode was half-duplex, or one-way only, the users would normally have to decide in advance which direction transmissions would proceed. However, software was used to work around this limitation as well. File transfer programs are written specifically for the Apple-CAT II's 202 mode, such as Catsend and the later CatFur , periodically paused and reversed transmission direction, so

1280-462: The Apple-CAT II could be used as a black box , red box , hacking tool, answering machine, war dialer , voice simulator, voice distorter, etc. BYTE criticized Novation, stating that "the company's literature should be very explicit" about the modem's inability to communicate at 1200 baud with Bell 212 modems without the expansion card, but concluded that "Apple users shopping for a modem would be wise to consider this system very carefully". Despite

1360-499: The Apple-CAT II's peak, compatibility with its native API increased, and MMII emulation became less of a necessity. A direct-connect version of the original 300 bit/s external modem was later released as the D-CAT . The "D" stood for "direct": the modem was directly connected into the handset jack of the telephone instead of requiring acoustic coupling. To operate the D-CAT, a number was dialed on

1440-514: The Apple-CAT II's popularity, its early years were faced with incompatibility with most telecommunications programs, as its native API is considered proprietary by today's standards. To increase compatibility without re-coding these programs, Novation released a firmware upgrade kit (an EPROM package) allowing the modem to emulate the Hayes Micromodem II , including the MMII's IN#x control codes. At

1520-517: The Bell System adopted a second system on the circuits that connected the exchanges. When the user dialed a long-distance number, indicated in North America by dialing a "1" at the beginning of the number, the call was switched to a separate system known as a " tandem ". The tandem would then buffer the remaining digits and decode the number to see which remote exchange was being dialed, generally using

1600-608: The KP key and the ST key is visible. In the 1950s, AT&T released a public relations film, "Speeding Speech", which described the operation of the system. In the film, the tone sequence for sending a complete telephone number is heard through a loudspeaker as a technician presses the keys for dialing. In November 1954, the Bell System Technical Journal published an article entitled "In-Band Single-Frequency Signaling", which described

1680-598: The ability to emulate the Bell 103, allowing a fallback method for data to be communicated at low speed if channel conditions deteriorated. Bell 103 modulation is still in use today, in shortwave radio , amateur radio , and some commercial applications. Its low signalling speed and use of audio frequencies makes it suitable for noisy or unreliable narrowband links. One example is the CHU shortwave station in Ontario , Canada which transmits

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1760-424: The age of seven by whistling . He became fascinated with the phone network, and over the next decade had built up a considerable base of knowledge about the system and how to place calls using the control tones. He and other phone phreaks , such as " Bill from New York " and "The Glitch", trained themselves to whistle 2600 Hz to reset a trunk line. They also learned how to route telephone calls by flashing, that

1840-457: The background might randomly contain the SF tones and the system had to filter these out. To do this, the signaling unit compared the signal power from a bandpass filter centered on 2600 Hz to signal power in other parts of the audio band, and only triggered if the tone was the most prominent signal. The originating end of the call would play the tone into the trunk line when the call ended, and trigger

1920-544: The black market for a typical $ 800–1,000 or as much as $ 3,500. Actually, designing and building one was within the capabilities of many electronics students and engineers with knowledge of the required tones, using published designs for electronic oscillators, amplifiers and switch matrixes, and assembled with readily available parts. Furthermore, it was possible to generate the required tones using consumer products or lab test equipment. The tones could be recorded on small, battery powered, cassette recorders for playback anywhere. In

2000-400: The blue box speaker over the microphone in the handset and use the box to send the 2600 Hz tone (or 2600+2400 Hz on many international trunks followed by a 2400 Hz tone). The called office interpreted this tone as the caller hanging up before the call completed, disconnected the call, and began playing 2600 Hz to mark the line free. However, this did not disconnect the call at

2080-406: The blue box). All sold issues were recalled or seized from newsstands by police and officials of Pacific Bell , causing financial loss to the magazine. The magazine ceased operations for good in 1975. The June 1975 issue of 73 magazine carried an article describing the rudiments of the long-distance signaling network, and how to construct and operate red and blue boxes. This article included

2160-509: The blue box. Bell also would wiretap the affected lines. In one 1975 case, the Pacific Telephone Company targeted one defendant's line with the following equipment: These actions resulted in several highly publicized trials. The ultimate solution to the blue box vulnerability was to do what the phreakers thought impossible and upgrade the entire network. This process occurred in stages, some of which were already well underway in

2240-713: The built-in serial port, phone line and handset connections. Due to its cost at the time, the item is very rare. The Apple-CAT II was popular with phone phreakers for its high half-duplex 1200 bit/s speed and its ability to detect various tones. It also had the ability to generate tones directly into the phone line. Several specialized applications such as TSPS , The Cats Meow and Phantom Access were used to mimic standard telephone sounds such as standard numeric DTMF dial tones as well as blue box tones, ringing (both American and International), dial tones, call waiting alerts, busy signals, 2600 Hz tones, and other effects such as payphone sounds. Due to these and other features,

2320-414: The called end sent the supervision flash, the caller used the blue box to send a "Key Pulse" or "KP", the tone that starts a routing digit sequence, followed by either a telephone number or one of the numerous special codes that were used internally by the telephone company, then finished with a "Start" tone, "ST". At this point, the called end of the connection would route the call the way it was told, while

2400-434: The caller were whistling into the telephone microphone while waiting for the called party to answer. Upon detecting the tone from the caller's end, the receiving signaling unit sent an on hook status to the connected equipment, which disconnected the call from that point forward, as if the caller had hung up. Among the earliest to discover this effect was Joe Engressia , known as Joybubbles , who accidentally discovered it at

2480-406: The caller's end, but instead would leave the caller on a live line that was connected via a long-distance trunk line to a target exchange. The caller would then stop playing the tone, which the exchange would interpret to mean the exchange's tandem was attempting to place another call. It responded by dropping its tone and then playing the flash to indicate it was ready to accept routing tones. Once

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2560-399: The caller's local exchange would act as if the call was still ringing at the original number. Blue boxing remained rare until the early 1970s when the required systems began to drop in cost and the concept began to be more widely known. At the time, phreakers felt there was nothing Bell Telephone could do to stop blue boxing because it would require Bell to upgrade all their hardware. For

2640-410: The calling and line supervision using a separate private line between the two offices. Using this system, when a long-distance call was placed the trunk line was not initially used. Instead, the local office sent a message containing the called number to the remote exchange using this separate channel. The remote office would then attempt to complete the call, and indicate this to the original office using

2720-524: The codes and tricks. I'd talk to the London operator, and convince her I was a New York operator. When I called my parents and my friends, I paid. After six months I quit—I'd done everything that I could. I was so pure. Now I realize others were not as pure, they were just trying to make money. But then I thought we were all pure. Jobs later told his biographer that if it had not been for Wozniak's blue boxes, "there wouldn't have been an Apple." Blue boxing hit

2800-508: The communication were using Apple-CAT II modems. In addition, the Apple-CAT II had the ability to support CCITT v.21 and CCITT v.23, the European standards for 300 and 300/1200 baud operation (as opposed to the normal Bell 103/202 versions). Though no known applications took advantage of this facility, it was possible to modify certain software such as ASCII Express by use of a hex editor to take advantage of this feature. Novation also released

2880-477: The connection process. The rotary dial was introduced around 1904 to operate these switches; the dial repeatedly rapidly connects and disconnects the line, a process known as pulse dialing . In common systems, these periodic changes in voltage caused a stepper motor to rotate one position for each pulse of a digit, with longer pauses to switch from one rotary switch to another. When enough digits had been decoded, typically seven in North America, connections between

2960-410: The customer's telephone. When the phone is on-hook ("hung up") the approximately 48  volt electricity from the exchange flows to the phone and is looped back without passing through the handset. When the user picks up the handset, the current has to flow through the speaker and microphone in it, causing the voltage to drop to under 10 V. This sudden drop in voltage signals the user has picked up

3040-416: The early 1970s. The T1 system was developed beginning in 1957 and began to be deployed around 1962. It digitized the voice signals so that they could be more efficiently carried in high-density connections between exchanges, carrying 24 lines on a single 4-wire connection. Depending on the network layout, the user might no longer be connected directly to a tandem, but instead to a local office that forwarded

3120-416: The early 1980s, Radio Shack sold pairs of Intersil 8038 voltage-controlled oscillator chips which were ideal for the purpose. A common hack was to use a TI-30 pocket calculator as the chassis of the device, with the diodes for the switch matrix wired into the keypad. An miniature audio jack connected through the recharge port for the calculator's optional rechargeable battery would then be used to connect

3200-486: The early days, the lists were probably intended to detect equipment malfunctions, but the follow-up investigation did lead to blue box users. After the toll free "800" service was inaugurated, the billing computers were also programmed to generate lists of lengthy calls to toll free numbers. While many of these calls were legitimate, telephone security employees would examine the lists and follow up irregularities. In this case, filters could be installed on those lines to block

3280-489: The entire network between the two endpoints consisted only of tandems, which became increasingly rare and disappeared by the late 1980s. Analog long-distance transmission systems remained more cost effective for the long haul circuits until, at least, the 1970s. Even then, there was a huge installed base of analog circuits, and it made better economic sense to keep using them. It was not until competitor Sprint built its all digital, "quiet", network, where "you could actually hear

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3360-438: The extra trouble of building blue boxes that stored telephone numbers and played the tones with the same timing as the machines. The widespread ability to blue box, once limited to just a few isolated individuals exploring the telephone network, developed into a subculture. Famous phone phreaks such as "Captain Crunch", Mark Bernay, and Al Bernay used blue boxes to explore the various "hidden codes" that could not be dialled by

3440-456: The first half of the 20th century, but long-distance calling still required operator intervention. Automation was deemed essential by AT&T . By the 1940s they had developed a system that used audible tones played over the long-distance lines to control network connections. Tone pairs, referred to as multi-frequency (MF) signals, were assigned to the digits used for telephone numbers. A different, single tone, referred to as single frequency (SF),

3520-453: The immediate term, Bell responded with a number of blue box detection and law enforcement countermeasures. Armed with records of all long-distance calls made, kept by both mechanical switching systems and newer electronic switching systems , including calls to toll-free telephone numbers which did not appear on customer bills, telephone security employees began examining those records looking for suspicious patterns of activity. For instance, at

3600-403: The internal connection, the Apple-CAT II was able to feature a full range of dialing commands, and could report a wide range of call progress tones (BUSY, REORDER, etc.) that many modems still lack today. These operations were handled directly by software on the host computer; the modem set certain registers when tones were heard on the line, and by timing when these registers were set or cleared,

3680-511: The international warez scene , especially in Europe. Software was made to enable blue boxing using a computer to generate and play the signaling tones. For the PC there were BlueBEEP , TLO, and others, and blue boxes were available for other platforms such as Amiga . Local plain old telephone service works by watching the voltage on the telephone lines between the telephone company's exchange office and

3760-403: The local tandem had found a free line and connected to it, it then relayed the rest of the phone number over the line using the tone dialing method. The remote tandem then decoded the tones and turned them back into pulses on the local exchange. To indicate the start and end of a series of MF digits, special MF tones, KP and ST, were used. When the call was finished and one of the parties hung up

3840-528: The mainstream media when an article by Ron Rosenbaum titled Secrets of the Little Blue Box was published in the October 1971 issue of Esquire magazine . Suddenly, many more people wanted to get into the phone phreaking culture spawned by the blue box, and it furthered the fame of Captain Crunch. In June 1972, Ramparts magazine printed the wiring schematics necessary to create a mute box (a variant of

3920-533: The modem to connect. This was only possible because telephones were generally available only from Western Electric , all of a standardized size and layout. There was no sort of automated operation available; even hanging up had to be done manually by returning the handset to the telephone and thereby pressing the hook button. Novation also introduced an internal direct-connect modem, the Apple-CAT II , which plugged into an expansion slot in an Apple II computer. Due to

4000-485: The number when the modem was first started. Once the connection was made, the modem switched to "data mode", and from then on had to be operated manually. The J-CAT was Novation's first attempt to make a "smart modem", albeit in a rather non-standard fashion. Its most basic feature was that J-CAT could be placed in a mode where it would automatically pick up the phone if it was called, offering rudimentary auto-answer capability. In an era when it could be safely assumed that

4080-417: The outgoing connection and then connect a digit receiver. There would be a KP button, to be pressed next, 10 buttons for telephone number digits, and the ST button to be pressed last. The blue box may have had 7 oscillators, 6 for the 2 out of 6 digit code and one for the 2600 Hz tone, or 2 oscillators with switchable frequencies. The blue box was thought to be a sophisticated electronic device and sold on

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4160-556: The phone line. Instead of using in-band signalling , like the Smartmodem, the J-CAT passed the on/off-hook control, carrier detect and phone status indication to the computer through otherwise unused pins in the RS-232C connector. The computer could pulse the hook line to simulate pulse dialing or hang up, and read the status pin to look for line signals like ringing or busy (any noise on the line

4240-436: 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 often required tinkering by

4320-432: The phone, their exchange would notice the change in voltage and begin playing the 2600 Hz tone into the trunk line. The other end of the connection would respond to the tone by causing their local call to hang up as well, and then began playing the tone into their end as before, to mark the line as free at both ends. The blue box consisted of several of audio oscillators , a telephone keypad , an audio amplifier and

4400-444: The phone. Originally, all calls were routed manually by an operator who would look for small light bulbs that would illuminate when a subscriber picked up the phone to make a call. The operator would connect a handset to the line, ask the user who they were calling, and then connect a cable between two phone jacks to complete the call. If the user was placing a long-distance call, the local operator would first talk to an operator at

4480-418: The piano did not have to be near the phone. Consumer tape recorders came later and made the recording process easier. Small, battery powered, tape recorders allowed the tones to be played back almost anywhere. It was possible to construct an electronic blue box with 1940s vacuum tube technology, but the device would have been relatively large and power hungry. Just as it did for radios, shrinking them from

4560-595: The receiving computer could acknowledge receipt of a stream of data, and, in the case of CatFur, could add a short chat message to the sender in the middle of the one-way file transfer. Many bulletin board systems (BBSs) running CatSend and then CatFur were set up to transfer warez . One BBS program that worked around this limitation was Tele-Cat II, which used escape sequences to switch between 202 half-duplex 1200 bits/second mode (for sending data) and Bell 103 full-duplex 300 bits/second mode (for receiving user input). The 202 CatFur protocol could only be used if both ends of

4640-442: The remote end to end the call. After a short time, the originating end reduced the tone level and continued to send tone as long as it received on hook status from its local equipment. Before the technical details were published, many users discovered unintentionally, and to their annoyance, that a 2600 Hz tone played into the caller's handset would cause a long-distance call to disconnect. The 2600 Hz tone might be present if

4720-417: The remote exchange using one of the trunk lines between the two locations. When the local operator heard the remote customer come on the line, they would connect their local customer to the same trunk line to complete the call. The calling process began to be automated from the earliest days of the telephone system. Increasingly sophisticated electromechanical systems would use the changes in voltage to start

4800-399: The remote user would hang up when they were finished their call, as they were likely using an acoustic coupler modem like the original CAT, the lack of a "hang up my phone" command was not a real problem. This made the J-CAT useful for BBS use; Novation ran a simple one to allow users to test their new modems. The J-CAT also supported another non-standard feature that allowed direct control of

4880-513: The required keys and dial a phone number. Another strategy would have been to purchase doorbells , remove the plungers, and mount them on a frame that could be set over the piano keyboard. Twelve DPDT pushbuttons, labelled KP, ST and the 10 digits, would operate pairs of plungers to play the phone company tones, after the E7 piano key had been pressed and released. At the time, there were consumer devices for recording on wire or blank phonograph records , so

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4960-659: The rotors would select a single line, the customer being dialed. The idea of using changing voltages to complete the call worked well for the local exchange where the distance between the customer and exchange office might be on the order of a few kilometers. Over longer distances, the capacitance of the lines filter out any rapid changes in voltage and dialing pulses do not reach the remote office in clean form, so that long-distance calls still required operator intervention. As telephone use grew, long-distance calling in particular, telephone companies were increasingly interested in automating this type of connection. To address this need,

5040-401: The same private line. Only if the remote user answered would the systems attempt to find a free trunk line and connect, thereby reducing the use of the trunk lines to the absolute minimum. This change also meant the signaling system was available internally to the network on this separate line. There was no connection between the user lines and this signaling line, so there was no route by which

5120-411: The signal over a T1 to a more distant exchange that did have the tandem. Simply due to the way the system worked, the supervisory signals had to be filtered out in order for the digitization of the analog signal to work. Recall that the 2600 Hz tone was not dropped from the trunk until the line was connected all the way and would be mixed with other tones like the ringing or busy signal; when used over

5200-561: The signaling scheme used for starting and ending telephone calls for the purpose of routing over trunk lines . In November 1960, an article in the Bell System Technical Journal provided an overview of the technical details of signaling systems, and disclosed the frequencies of the signals. The system was relatively complex for 1950s technology. It had to accurately decode the frequencies and ignore any signals where that frequency might be accidentally created; music playing in

5280-421: The size of toasters to the size of cigarette packages and allowing them to be powered by small batteries, transistor technology made a small, battery powered, electronic blue box practical. AT&T security captured its first blue box in about 1962, but it probably was not the first one built. A typical blue box had 13 pushbuttons. One button would be for the 2600 Hz tone, pressed and released to disconnect

5360-468: The software could determine what was happening on the line. The Apple-CAT II also supported the Bell 202 protocol, which allowed half-duplex 1200 bit/s operation when connecting to another Apple-CAT II modem. This was an exceptionally rare feature; modems with "full" 1200 bit/s operation were expensive devices intended to be used with minicomputers and mainframes , and typically cost thousands of dollars. Since

5440-422: The speaker to play the tones into the handset. To reduce call set up time, telephone numbers were transmitted from machine to machine in a "speed dial" format, about 1.5 seconds for a 10-digit number, including KP and ST. To catch the cheaters, AT&T could have connected monitors to digit receivers that were not being used for operator dialed calls and logged calls dialed at manual speed. So, some hackers went to

5520-399: The tandem determined which remote exchange was being called it scanned the trunk lines between the two exchanges looking for the tone. When it heard the tone on one of the lines, it knew that line was free to use. They would then select that line and drop the 2600 Hz tone from their end. The remote tandem would hear the tone stop, drop their tone, and then play a supervision flash , making

5600-457: The telephone and the user waited for a carrier signal from the modem being called, just as with an acoustic modem. When a carrier signal was received, a button was pressed on the D-CAT which made it produce a carrier signal and establish a connection with the modem being called, then the handset would be left off-hook. A further improvement was the Auto-CAT , which allowed dialing the phone by entering

5680-407: The time, calls to long-distance information, while answered, deliberately did not return the electrical "off hook" signal indicating that they had been answered. When an information call was diverted to another number that answered, the billing equipment would log that event. Billing computers processed the logs and generated lists of calls to information that had been answered with an off-hook tone. In

5760-444: The time, duration and destination of the call. A blue box device allowed for circumventing these charges by enabling an illicit user, referred to as a " phreaker ," to place long-distance calls, without using the network's user facilities, that would be billed to another number or dismissed entirely by the telecom company's billing system as an incomplete call. A number of similar "color boxes" were also created to control other aspects of

5840-442: The tones with the technology available at the time the system was first deployed. A piano or electronic organ had keys that were close enough in frequency to work. With tuning, they could even be made dead on frequency. For dialing the phone number, the user would press two keys at a time. An experienced pianist might have found the key combinations awkward to play. But a blank player piano roll could have been punched to operate

5920-476: The user to remain operational. Over time, as the long-distance network became digitized, the audio call-control tones were replaced with out-of-band signaling methods in the form of common-channel signaling (CCS) carried digitally on a separate channel inaccessible to the telephone user. This development limited the usefulness of audio-tone-based blue boxes by the 1980s, and they are of little to no use today. Local calling had been increasingly automated through

6000-547: The users could influence the dialing. The same rapid reduction in prices that made the blue box possible also led to the rapid reduction in cost of the ESS systems. First applied only to their busiest connections, by the 1980s, the latest 4ESS models and similar machines from other companies were deployed to almost all major exchanges, leaving only corners of the network still connected using tandems. Blue boxing worked if one connected to such an exchange, but could only be used end-to-end if

6080-544: Was also offered as the 212 Apple-CAT II , as an internal modem. These models had little to distinguish themselves from other Smartmodem clones, and Novation appears to have disappeared in the early 1980s. The original CAT was also sold in re-branded form by a number of companies. Bell 103 modem The Bell 103 modem or Bell 103 dataset was the second commercial modem for computers , released by AT&T Corporation in 1963. It allowed digital data to be transmitted over regular unconditioned telephone lines at

6160-413: Was launched in 1967 and gave the hackers easy numbers to call. The user would generally choose a number in the target area and then use it as above. Even if billing information were generated, it would be to a 1-800 number and thus free of charge. As before, the remote system would notice a call going to the ultimate non-free number, but could not match the other end. It was technically possible to generate

6240-525: Was never very popular even though it was fairly low-cost (for the era). The AutoCat series consisted of the AutoCat and 212 AutoCat, which were direct-connect modems with auto-answer capabilities. Novation eventually introduced their own standard smart modems, the Smart-CAT 103 and Smart-CAT 103-212 . As the names imply, the later included 1200 bit/s Bell 212 operation in addition to 300 bit/s Bell 103. The later

6320-462: Was reported as "1"). Using these features required a computer able to signal on spare pins, often requiring a second connector and a custom cable to support it. Combined with proper software this made the J-CAT fairly "smart", although Novation was careful to state it was not a "smart modem". Operation was generally similar to the Apple-CAT in concept. The J-CAT was released after the Smartmodem 300, so it

6400-493: Was used as a line status signal. This new system allowed the telephone network to be increasingly automated by deploying the dialers and tone generators on an as-required basis, starting with the busier exchanges. Bell Labs was happy to advertise their success in creating this system, and repeatedly revealed details of its inner workings. In the February 1950 issue of Popular Electronics , they published an advertisement, Playing

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