"Donald E. Kimberlin" <0004133373@mcimail.com> (06/30/91)
Doing a bit of housecleaning here, I came across the following
bit of Olde Tyme payphone fraud, here excerpted from a Letter to the
Editor in <TE&M Magazine> for 1 Jan 89:
"A Nickel Here..."
"In 1962, when I was a wee lad of 11, someone told me that if
one took a piece of metal, i.e., a booby pin or paper clip, placed one
end of the item through a hole in the mouthpiece and touched the other
end to the rim of the coin return slot (which at the time was open),
one could get dial tone.
"It did indeed work, and I used it on several occasions, once
to call Walt Disney. Since I did not know the telephone number, it
was an operator-assisted call. When she asked me to insert more moeny,
I was momentarily stunned. Not knowing what to do, I repeated the
grounding procedure numerous times, until she said, `Stop. That's
enough.' The call went through, but Walt was not in.
"When I was 16, in 1967, I worked for a time in a gas station.
It had a pay phone that someone found accepted pennies through the
quarter slot and returned dial tone. This only occurred if the penny
had been dipped in automatic transmission fluid. Needless to say, the
local teclo and my boss were not pleased the next time the coin
collector came.
"While I was in the Air Force, in `71 or `72, one of the guys
in the barracks found that one co}ld use a nickel in the quarterPslot
to get dial tone. The procedure was to hold the nickel in the slot
with your thumb. Then you removed your thumb, allowing the nickel to
fall. As soonc as it fell, you hit the coin return button with your
thumb. It was a timing thing, but the method was soon mastered by
many (myself included).
"My vocation is technical sales support. My employer is, as you
can tell, Wisconsin Bell. The irony occurs to me at times......
Michael P. Nolan
Manager-Network Design
Wisconsin Bell"
----------------
...It's likely this story is a fairly common one. But it
makes one ponder how many telephone careers such "phreaking" caused,
at the sum of a nickel at a time.David Lesher <wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu> (07/01/91)
> ...It's likely this story is a fairly common one. But it > makes one ponder how many telephone careers such "phreaking" caused, > at the sum of a nickel at a time. I know of several. A friend of mine and his high school comrades prided themselves on working on pay phones. After Ma raised the toll to a dime (OUTRAGEOUS!), they changed them all back. One of them looked up the patent description for the 10-G key {that fitted virtually all the "three gonger" upper housings around} and he made keys from the patent text. One of them was finally arrested for collecting some abandoned drop wire. The Judge told him he'd never get a *real* job with that blot on his record. His Honor was correct: Douglas worked for 15+ years for some outfit in Murray Hill NJ with funny green copper roofs. My friend worked about that long at Lorain Products. There, he worked on early UPS systems, including one in the White House. Attn US Attorney types: These crimes all took place during the Ike presidency. Please don't ask me for details -- I was not there. wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu (305) 255-RTFM