40+ Years of the Electronic Playground

by Alan

2007/06/11

   For those who know me well it is no surprise that I have been no
stranger to the world of technology in a way not always regarded as
typical.  I may have done what is considered part of today's
electronic society, but it was not typical for a kid to be walking
around with a machine pumping tunes in 1969!  Nor was it commonplace
to be communicating with numerous folks near and far using pseudonyms
in 1975!

   A lot began with my fascination for the radios in my house.  I
noticed how the radio would come alive at nightfall with the sounds
of clear channel stations on the Standard Broadcast radio band (later
known as AM) from US cities such as Salt Lake City (KSL 1160), Seattle
(KIRO 710, KOMO 1000), Chicago (WGN 720, WBBM 780, WLS 890), Minneapo-
lis/St. Paul (WCCO 830, KSTP 1500), and others in varying strengths.
A regional giant from Bismarck (KFYR 550) was available 24 hours a day,
although CBK 540 (Now known as CBC Radio One in Saskatchewan) caused
great havoc in hearing Bismarck's signal (later learned this was
purposely done to prevent the Americanization of our beloved Canadian
society).

   1966 saw the radio go live on the road!  Before then, we did not
have a radio in the family car.  This was a magical marvel, getting
the new family car!  I will never know what made the car radio so
superior in capability to receive stations from so far away so
clearly.  To make a radio in a house receive such required the
stringing of long wires and pounding spikes into the ground (learned
from having one of these Build-Your-Own-Crystal-Radio kits and
connecting the antenna and ground to the terminals on the back of the
tube radio, a 1946 RCA Victor Model 80, one of the first radios with
FM, a unit I still have).  Not only could you hear more stations at
night from far away places but you could hear numerous stations from
up to 400 miles away during daytime hours, many of whose power levels
were very low because their range was intended for a local community,
many of whom ceased broadcast at sunset.  Also, I was fascinated by
the fact that one could hear three out of four Regina stations from
as far away as Jackson Wyoming, among other places in the Northwest
we went on our beloved summer vacations (visual reference: cliche
black and white film footage of pipe smoking professor with wife and
little girl with ribbons and little boy with brushcut watching
Yellowstone bears walking up to cars circa 1964 - Go Yogi!).

  Radio remained a big part of my scope of interest to this day (to
which I will later make reference, as this article is taking a
chronological path), but nothing captivated my interest more than did
the telephone!

I was constantly picking it up and twisting the rotary dial to hear
what sound would hit my ear, many with fascination, a few with utter
terror (the siren like "no such circuit" signal made me think I had
done the electronic equivalent of pulling a fire alarm pull station
and that I was going to be in deep doo doo!).  I'm also sure that
operators at the local telephone office cringed at the sound of my
incoherent babbling, as their directives prevented them from saying
what they wanted to say (I'm sure they never had a "hacker" in their
midst and likely had little or no training as how to deal with
such).   However, nothing really impacted those around me regarding
the phone until the day a family friend told me the number that would
make the phone ring.  This, I believe, caused my father to disown
this man as a friend!  The constant ringing to have nothing but what
sounded like Mr. Buzz (nickname for dial tone which I will come to
later) be present annoyed everyone in my household and those whose
houses I regularly invaded (more to come on this topic, as well!).

   Of all the sounds that I had heard when playing with systematic
trials with digit by digit searches there were two that puzzled me to
no end.   If one dialed 115 or 116 from Regina's central or old
northside exchanges a sound resembling a fog horn, sometimes rising
in pitch from start, would be heard.   A year or two went by.  One
Saturday, my parents had something to do and decided I was able to
take their charge card downtown to buy some needed clothing.  After
getting what it was I needed I asked the clerk if I could use the
phone to call my parents to tell them what was happening (I did that
a lot when I was out-mostly to hear the clicks and clunks from the
phone switches) and that I was on my way home.  The clerk told me,
"Dial nine to get out!".  What did I hear when I picked up the
phone?  The foghorn!  To use 21st century geek speak, I had 0wn3d a
PBX and didn't even know it!  A little experimentation led me to
conclude the circuits 115 and 116 were meant as an intercorporate
connection between the PBXes of Simpsons-Sears Limited (formerly The
Robert Simpson Company Limited) and The new Robert Simpson Company
Limited (formerly R. H. Williams and Sons Department Store), as
office staff and customer accounts were in common.

   Now, the fun was about to begin.  After a few times of getting a
fast busy foghorn when dialing a nine I received a pause, a click,
and a dial tone which was that of the downtown central office (had I
lived on the downtown exchange I might have dismissed it as having
received my own dial tone back, but this was not my own (our exchange
had a different pitch and ring style))!  This made tinkering with 1+
7 digits or 1+ 10 digits safer to play with since someone's picking
up the receiver or something causing toll supervision would land on
Simpsons' bill, not our own, and with the multitude of long distance
calls made from that switchboard in the course of daily business (the
"9" only worked during business or store hours) who is going to
notice a few extra short calls here and there?!  Everywhere I'd ever
been in my life and played with a phone in addition to anywhere from
where I'd be able to receive a radio station was now my ever-so-small
world!  My lust for virtual presence was being satisfied.

   Playing with payphones, especially those in smaller towns that
didn't require a dime to be deposited until a party answered, was a
constant for me.  What was most interesting was the fact that when a
long distance call was attempted on a payphone in a city such as
Regina or Lethbridge, it was met with a fast busy signal on any digit
other than "1" as a second digit, thus completely prohibiting the
dialing of long distance calls from payphones (there were no billing
processes in those days and calls had to be placed by dialing "0" for
the telephone operator and depositing coins as instructed).  However,
if a long distance call was dialed through the 115 PBX no supervision
to the payphone would occur, thus refunding the dime deposited to
allow the payphone to operate (urban payphones were useless in an
emergency because they required a coin to get the dial tone or enable
operation of the dial (more on the variations of this later)).  Local
calls or calls to internal extensions supervised and made the
payphone collect the coin deposited.  This made pranking to local
numbers from a payphone completely unattractive.  Thus, random calls
for nothing more than childish amusement (I am ten through seventeen
years of age during these escapades) went to toll numbers.  My aim
was that these would be done to no one's actual expense.  Needless to
say, these random calls to various places in Saskatchewan, Alberta,
BC, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, as well as the odd call
to places elsewhere, increased in number, duration, and inevitably,
left a pattern.

   During this same period my discovery of payphone loopholes had
another scheme for getting a call through without operator
intervention or coin deposit.  Many small towns used "112" as the
access code for dialing long distance calls.  To prevent this from a
payphone, an extra "1" was injected so the operator would be
connected to inform the caller that direct dialing from a payphone
was not available and that the call needed to be placed with the
operator by dialing "0".   If the pulses of the "2" in the "112" were
received quickly enough after the previous "1" the injected "1" would
be missed by the switch in the toll center ("111" was operator, "112"
was DDD access, "113" was information, "114" was repair, the others
generally unused).  This allowed seven or ten digits to follow.
There was another obstacle to overcome.  When a payphone initiated
connection was made to a circuit in the toll center a tone resembling
the local dial tone (slight variation in pitch sometimes) would be
sent upon toll supervision by the local switch to enable the operator
that the call was originating from a payphone so that the operator
could inform the caller that DDD access was not allowed or that the
"0" had been dialed from a payphone.  Until ANI was universally
implemented checking operators would come in to ask the caller for
the number being called from and release the caller into the call.
This operator did not have the line holding power that the "0"
operator had but would deny to release the call if a payphone
indication tone was heard.  For some reason, switches in Saskatchewan
and Alberta would supervise when the switch had received the last
digit dialed rather then when the checking operator picked up to
obtain the caller's number.  At busy times this led to the operator
not hearing the payphone indication tone and asking for the number
routinely.  Provided a number that was not a payphone assigned
number, the operator would enter whatever number the caller gave
without question.  This provided great opportunity to complete calls
without the inconvenience of having to pay.

   Needless to say, every bubble gets bursted, or busted, and the
one bursting the bubble is usually one with a sharp nose, long tail,
and goes by a name Beatrix Potter readers will fondly remember,
Samuel Whiskers, or in other words, a RAT!  Although my world was
small and it never occurred to me that "normal" people's world is
still quite vast, and that a twelve year old from Regina phoning
Lethbridge to talk to another kid whom he met while on summer
vacation was not typical.  My peril was saying who I was.  This
overprotective do-gooder phoned my aunt, my parents, AGT, and the
police!   Another such mother told a phone company representative
that I had called their place long distance.  (Visualization: Brown
matter hitting oscillating blades!)

   The consequences that followed were surprisingly minor.  The
payphone call to the friend was moved to my parents' phone bill, 55
cents, the actual cost of the call.   The calls through the Simpsons
PBX had a charge account entry item on my parents' Simpsons Store
Charge-A-Plate for $200.00 with a hand written entry, "Direct Dialed
Calls"!  This was like a administrative charge issued to my sister 20
years later when my nephew was caught shoplifting from Zellers.

   Over the years that followed I found a few nice "features" of the
switches used to complete long distance calls.  One such item was
that depressing the switch hook at the precise moment would cause the
ANI to fail and a checking operator would come online to ask for the
caller's number and then release the call.  This is something that
would have been handy to keep all those calls from landing on
Simpsons' bill, maybe delaying that loophole's demise.  Having been
bitten by giving no-serviced numbers to checking operators this had
to have a different advantage.  This led to an experiment.  If a
number is dialed and then that number was given to the checking
operator it would release.  I have been forever curious how this
would be interpreted by the billing system.  There would be a
destination and a duration, but there would be no way to determine a
charge since there would have to be an originating point to calculate
a rate to charge for the call.  This loophole remained for nearly
eight years before the switch in Regina's toll switching center would
refuse a number local to the destination number to the checking
operator.  Places elsewhere had plugged up this hole much earlier.

   The publication of an article, "Hello World! - Tricks with a
little black box"  brought on a whole new meaning to the tinkering
with the telephone.  This article told the story of Captain Crunch
and the building of devices that led to an underground movement of
"Phreakers" .  The cover read, "Why Phone Freaks don't get phone
bills - They use a little black box.  It's illegal, naturally!".  The
article described that the 2600 hertz tone was closest to High E on
the piano keyboard, and having a piano in my house, it was no time at
all until I was tuned to this pitch.  Given that I did not have a
blue box, as described in great detail, I experimented greatly with
whistling, and did so cautiously, as the article described a
situation where someone was busted for whistling.  I made a Blue Box
with my first home computer in later years, and tested it, but never
went hog wild with it, mainly out of fear of being busted.

   In the time of discovering the article, there was a story about a
place where phreakers met online.  There was a circuit in Vancouver
BC that allowed anyone who keyed in (or pulsed in 2600hz bursts) 604
2111 to be connected in a conference, in this reference, a "loop".
This was closed down by the authorities but I was determined to find
another.  I noticed that the directory assistance number
(1-604-555-1212) started supervising, which made phreaking less risky
(the article had pointed out that the 555 number was risky because a
supervision on an unsupervised line would raise a red flag).  I
played around to find that 121 would reach an inward operator that
would dial any number that the toll center covered and 131 would
reach directory assistance.  It was an attempt to find a way to
connect to elsewhere that I discovered a non-supervisory recording
that endlessly described the coin deposit jingles in payphones, "five
cents, ding! ten cents, ding-ding! twenty-five cents, dong! five
cents, ding ...), being the strangest recording I ever heard to this
day!

  Technology brought other delights, as well!  During the sixties I
sent away for electronics catalogs from such places as Heathkit, or
Allied Electronics.  This led me to discover the poor man's mobile
telephone, the Citizen's Band Radio!  Early models ranged in power
from forty milliwatts in children's walkie-talkies to twelve watts in
Single Sideband equipped units.  Many models had one, two, six, or
twelve selected channels, using individual crystals to twenty-three,
and later forty channels.  This was an inexpensive means of
communication for local communication for a variety of purposes.
This brought forth a revenue means for the government.  Every unit
with an input-to-antenna power of greater than 100 milliwatts had to
be licensed by the federal governments of Canada and the US.  This
brought forth a subculture.  Persons who engaged in "a diversionary
or recreational activity", or communicated with those "beyond the
ground wave coverage of the station", both prohibited uses of the
service brought forth as a means of preventing congestion of the
airwaves, proliferated in great numbers, especially in the mid to
late seventies.  Some operators even increased their base input
power, using what were known as linear amplifiers, as well as
operated outside the allocated frequency range specified by the FCC
(or Canadian Department of Communications).  The latter two
violations led to prosecutions brought forth by the feds.  It seemed
that the intent was to act upon complaints (mostly interference to
broadcast radio and television reception), but some jurisdictions had
officers with greater bones to pick.

   Regulations of the day stated that one used one's licensed call
sign to call another.  In a circle of pioneer operators it was
customary to know each other by name and call letters.  Most evenings
a net call was conducted to ensure that the local operators were
available for emergencies or other situations requiring a group
effort.  As communities grew there became distinct groups of
operators, most of whom formed associations or clubs, in which a
variety of events and activities were held.  There even became rival
groups, forming constitutions that worked to exclude members of the
rival group.  Two such activities that were commonplace around
America were Jamborees (a campout of CBers, mainly an excuse to drink
heavily en masse) and Bunny Hunts (a strategic game of Hide-and-Seek
using a hidden radio operator).  However, nothing contributed to the
population explosion more than the music industry!  In 1975 a pop/
country song named "Convoy" by C. W. McCall hit the airwaves.  It
seemed that after that, every kid had a radio and the means to
identify oneself was by using a pseudonym, or "handle" and flocked to
channel nineteen (the most commonly used channel by semi drivers
along North America's highways), just to use the customary
announcement that one was going to call by pressing the transmit
button and yelling, "Breaker One Nine!", and awaiting a response, "Go
Break!" before proceeding to call another unit by their handle.
Often, so many would try calling at once (sometimes because those
whose signals they collided were beyond earshot due to distance or
the fact that the squelch control on the radio unit was set too high
so only a nearby signal would break through) that one could not
understand a single word through a collision of signals.

   There was no greater a collision of transmitted signals than that
of the ionispheric reflection of signals that routinely occurred at
varying times of the day and night, mostly daytime during winter
months.  Local communication became next to impossible but this
phenomenon allowed one to communicate (even with low power or small
antenna setup) with units several hundreds of miles away.  This
proved to be more fun than any of the other aspects of these
technologies.  This made the world smaller and made for hour of
collecting contacts, all in hope of reaching someone in a foreign
country somewhere, while having constant contact with many very
accented folks in the deep South.  Conditions occasionally permitted
contact with unit remarkably close, and in some cases, that one often
made a land line long distance call to verify the location of the
contact whose signal was so clear it could have been someone nearby
pretending to be far away.


Expect an addendum sometime soon only at:  http://www.nettwerked.net/