Before the world knew about computer hackers, there was a whole subculture called phreaks. They didn’t hack computers because there weren’t many computers. But they could easily hack… telephone networks. And they did it using ordinary whistles, soldering irons, and tricks.

A whistle from a cereal box that could ring around the world

In the 1970s, the US had a telephone system based on tone signaling: short beeps controlled calls and line switching. For example, a 2600 Hz signal told the system that the line was free. One person, Joe Engressia, a blind student with perfect pitch, noticed that he could whistle this frequency and gain control of the telephone line. This opened the way to free long-distance calls. It later turned out that a toy whistle that produced the same frequency was sold in a box of Cap’n Crunch cornflakes. One of the future phreakers, John Draper, took the pseudonym Captain Crunch and began using this whistle to intercept communication lines. He built devices called blue boxes himself - gadgets that imitated signals to control telephone systems.

Apple started with phreakers?

Yes, almost. One of Draper's friends, Steve Wozniak, was so inspired by the idea that he and Steve Jobs began assembling and selling blue boxes on the university campus. Jobs later said: "If it weren't for the blue box, there would be no Apple." Phreakers became the first real tech enthusiasts. Their motivation was a mixture of curiosity, rebellion, and the desire to understand how everything works. For them, the telephone system was a huge mechanism that could be hacked to feel the power of knowledge.

They were not stopped by laws

In those years, such activities were not entirely illegal - the laws simply did not keep up with technology. But later, phreakers began to be punished seriously. John Draper served time, but he retained his cult status. This subculture gave birth to a way of thinking in which technologies were not tools, but toys to be explored. It was this spirit — of hacking, freedom, and experimentation — that later migrated to computers, and phreaks became the first hackers. ⸻ Why is this important? The history of phreaking is a reminder that creative hooliganism is at the origins of many technologies. Most of these people did not mean any harm — they were simply smarter, more curious, and faster than the systems around them. It is also a reminder: just because you see a system, you don’t have to use it as intended. Sometimes it can be studied, disassembled… and rewritten.