Article Captain Crunch
Summary: In the early seventies, a group of hackers called “phone phreaks” emerged, earning notoriety by creating high-tech ways to beat the costs of long distance calls. “Cap’n Crunch” was the most notorious of them all.
Posted by: Elliot Feldman
blue box John Draper is one of Silicon Valley’s original high tech wizards. He’s more famously known as “Cap’n Crunch.” His only link to the sugary cereal, however, is a plastic toy whistle that was once a prize giveaway in each cereal box.
In the late sixties, Draper had discovered that the Cap’n Crunch toy whistle’s tone perfectly matched A.T.&T.’s 2600-hertz long distance trunk telephone signal; thus, enabling him to make free long distance phone calls around the world.
Early Career
One of Draper’s early influences was Joe Engressia, a blind-since-birth phone hacker with a 172 IQ and perfect vocal pitch. At a young age, Engressia had discovered that he could perfectly mimic A.T.&T.’s 2600-hertz long distance trunk telephone signal and make unlimited free long distance calls around the world. In the early eighties, Engressia was captured. After the court fined him and placed him on probation, he gave up his illegal activities and went to work as a trouble shooter for the Mountain Bell phone company for several years.
As for John Draper, by the early seventies, he had moved from hacking long distance calls with plastic toy whistles to building “blue boxes.” These were electronic devices that mimicked a wide range of telephone company transmission signals. He gained a reputation with the northern California hippy community and was dubbed “Cap’n Crunch” for obvious reasons.
His reputation eventually led him to a meeting with technology freaks Steven Wozniak and Steve Jobs, the founders of Apple, in a college dorm room. Woz and Jobs were intrigued with the eccentric John Draper.
According to several sources, Woz and Draper had once used a blue box to call the Vatican at 4 am. Woz posed as then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger complete with phony German accent, and demanded to speak to the Pope even if they had to wake him up.
In the mid-seventies, Draper went to work for Apple.
EasyWriter
After an article in Esquire Magazine about “phone phreaks” (as they became known) and their so-called guru “Cap’n Crunch,” Draper came under the scrutiny of authorities. In 1976, he was arrested and sentenced to a short prison term for phone fraud. During his prison stay, he wrote the code for EasyWriter, Apple and then IBM’s first word processing program.
After his 1978 arrest and conviction for phone fraud, Apple distanced itself from Draper. In a recent interview, Wozniak said that Draper was too “weird and dangerous to be a close friend,” and claimed that he had originally thought that “Cap’n Crunch” was an “ethical hacker” who only used a blue box to find flaws in the system.
Currently John Draper has his own high tech company and is frequently hired as a consultant.
Joybubbles
As for Joe Engressia, in 1988 he changed his name to “Joybubbles” and founded the “Church of Eternal Childhood”, declaring to the world that he was five years old and would remain that age until the day he died. And so he did.
Joybubbles died in August 2007, leaving behind videotapes of every episode of the children’s television series “Mister Rogers.”
References
- “The Twilight Years of Cap’n Crunch”, Chris Roades, Wall Street Journal
- “Cyberpunk”, Katie Hafner
- “Joybubbles, 58, Peter Pan of phone hackers, dies”, Douglas Martin, New York Times