Joybubbles - a telephone conversation with (1 photo) Bashny.Net

Very interesting story.





Activities of this kind, phreaking (phreaking) was born a long time ago, when the corporation Bell, autocrat reigning world telephone communications, decided to switch to a new system in which all network operations were carried out by transmitting the audio signals of certain frequencies. There were fifties. Blind from birth seven year old boy, deprived of attention always busy parents spellbound listening to the monotonous tone, mysterious clicks and wheezing coming from the distant darkness through the telephone handset. Sometimes he whistled into the phone, repeating a speech, without much hope for a response. However, he likes to reliable, meek constancy of beeps. Unlike their peers, mentors, and even in a Catholic school, the warm tones of the phone did not try to lecture, blame and harass. But contrary to expectations, one day he waited for an answer. On this day, Joe Engressia (so called boy), uttering the familiar whistle into the phone, he suddenly heard the rhythmic tone interrupted clicks and stopped, as if waiting for the next command. Repeated attempts have led to the same results. Monologues turned into dialogue, and changed the lives of the young Joe forever. He could not know then that planted the seeds from which later sprang the whole underground sub-culture, whose adherents were such notorious figures as Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
Later, Joe boasted that understood the art of communicating with phones to such an extent that he was able to break off conversations remotely Nitsche unsuspecting people in a phone booth, emitting a corresponding sound passing them. But soon the enterprising young man discovered a much more practical application of his rare talent. It turned out in the presence of a certain experience, perfect pitch and ringing whistle, you can make free calls to (almost) anywhere in the world, without the knowledge of the phone itself corporation. On the call of Joe responded phones in the most unexpected places, sometimes, feeding at the same time a sense of omnipotence and solitude.
But the desire to share skills and overcame shyness soon as a young student at the University of South Florida, Joe dispute demonstrated their skills stricken comrades. However, during one of these foci suspicious overheard telephone operator on the other end of the line, Joe was preparing his audience to a triumphant finale, and recognizes all the malice conspiracy informed the appropriate authorities. This is far from the last time, Joe escaped with slight shock and a small fine. Later court so frightened him that Joe had to temporarily reconsider their priorities.
Some time later, Joe spent many years wandering from town to town in search of work. He wanted to take the place worthy of his talents in the coveted phone company. With varying degrees of success he did it. At some point, Mr. Engressia, as it is now called, was entrusted to identify the weaknesses and shortcomings of telephone networks, which he had done with admirable ease, surprisingly engineers and technicians, who raised his hands looking like Joe accurately determine gender and even the location of the technical problems, listening to characteristics of tones and clicks coming from the tube.
It would seem that the goal is reached. But after some time, Joe realized that no work can not be compared with the world he has built himself a child. As a child, which, he believed, he and nebylo. The solution was simple. At the age of 39 years, Joe SPEECH WAS DELIVERED itself ever-five years, and even founded and headed the Church of eternal childhood, collecting donations in its ranks in favor of those who decided to return to his childhood forever. Such a serious name as Joe Engressia clearly discordant with the fundamental thesis of his philosophy, and it was of course changed to Joybubbles (bubbles of happiness?).
Joybubbles died in 2007 at the age of five (and 58) years, and telephone technologies far away from the snapping-whistle principles. Only the recording of a program called «Stories and Stuff», that Joe wrote on the phone, and then listened to by dialing (or nasvistev) corresponding phone numbers. He listened to the stories that once lacked the boy clung to the tube in the dark.