Screwing Ma Bell

When I was an undergraduate, both at Cal Tech and Berkeley, before joining the Army, it was fashionable to screw the phone company. Getting free long distance calls was the common tactic. At most campus hangouts, there would be cards near the pay phone listing phone charge numbers to use, sometimes allegedly belonging to Hollywood stars or famous politicians. Pick a charge number and make your call. I did this more than once.

More sophisticated, however, was an amazing tactic that worked briefly in the early days of push button dialing. As you may remember, a pushed button is followed by a tone, and the grandfathers of today's hackers used this to advantage. What I remember is this, pure magic: you dialed information. When the operator answered, you blew the highest note on a harmonica (I forget the key: it may have been A) into the receiver. You heard a click, then a new dial tone -- and from this you could dial any number and not be charged! Needless to say, the music stores had a hard time keeping this harmonica in stock. I made many calls this way.

Here was another secret. There was a number key sequence that emptied the coin box of a pay phone. This wasn't standard, apparently, but a flaw in certain phones. When you found one, wow, you could live on it for a while. I found one in Berkeley and would make a daily afternoon trip to empty the coin box. There were two phones side by side and only one had this casino feature. One day I came by and the magic phone was in use but the other vacant. I hung around waiting for the caller to get off so I could empty the coin box. Then someone else arrived and also waited. I said, The other phone's free. I know, he said. After a moment, we both started laughing. We both had discovered the magic phone. We became friends.

This only lasted a few months before they fixed it. The harmonica trick lasted a bit longer but it, too, got fixed. But this was sure fun while it lasted, and we never for a moment thought we were doing something wrong. I mean, this was Ma Bell. How can you do wrong screwing Ma Bell?

Ah, youth!