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A Look Back at One of the Original Phreaks

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the pioneers-of-the-past dept.

tmalone writes "The New York Times is running an end of year piece about the most interesting people who have died this year. One of their picks is Joybubbles, also known as Josef Engressia, or 'Whistler.' He was born blind and discovered at the age of 7 that he could whistle 2600 hertz into a phone to make free long-distance calls. He was one of the original phone phreaks, got arrested for phone fraud, and was even employed by the phone company. The article deals more with his personal life than with his technical exploits, but is a very interesting story."

3 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. NPR on Joybubbles by dsginter · · Score: 4, Informative

    NPR did a bit on Joybubbles (Joe's handle) some months ago.

    Very good listen.

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    1. Re:NPR on Joybubbles by Kizzle · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually Joybubbles is not his handle it's his legal name. He had it changed to that.

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      Hacker Media
  2. Re:Sneakers? by Albert+Sandberg · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Whistler is seen eating a box of "Cap'n Crunch". In the 1970s, "Cap'n Crunch" came with a small whistle in the box. A "phone phreaker" called "Captain Crunch" (John Draper) discovered that this whistle could be used to get free phone calls (one of many components in the practice of "phone phreaking", which digital phone switching-systems has made almost totally obsolete). Whistler is patterned after Joe Engressia, a blind telephone expert born with perfect pitch who was one of the original phone phreakers."

    It seems like it, taken from the trivia page of sneakers from imdb.