Chapter 2. The First Hackers: The Phone Phreakers

creator of self-improvement program Psycho-Cybernetics

We find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.

MAXWELL MALTZ

The first phone phreakers were teenage boys.

That fact alone isn’t too surprising, until you realize that those first hackers appeared in 1878, when teenage boys worked as telephone operators for the fledgling Bell Telephone network. Hiring teenage boys seemed logical; telegraph offices often hired them to work similar jobs as telegraph delivery messengers. Putting teenage boys in charge of the telephone network made good sense right up until they started randomly mixing telephone lines to connect total strangers as a prank and ...

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