Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell

â€œA rollicking history of the telephone system and the hackers who exploited its flaws.â€ â€”Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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Before smartphones, back even before the Internet and personal computers, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the worldâ€™s largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bellâ€™s revolutionary â€œharmonic telegraph,â€ by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something extraordinary, a web of cutting-edge switching machines and human operators that linked together millions of people like never before. But the network had a billion-dollar flaw, and once people discovered it, things would never be the same.
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Exploding the Phone tells this story in full for the first time. It traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&Tâ€™s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bellâ€™s Achillesâ€™ heel. Phil Lapsley expertly weaves together the clandestine underground of â€œphone phreaksâ€ who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, the explosion of telephone hacking in the counterculture, and the war between the phreaks, the phone company, and the FBI.
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The product of extensive original research, Exploding the Phone is a groundbreaking, captivating book that â€œdoes for the phone phreaks what Steven Levyâ€™s Hackers did for computer pioneersâ€ (Boing Boing).
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â€œAn authoritative, jaunty and enjoyable account of their sometimes comical, sometimes impressive and sometimes disquieting misdeeds.â€ â€”The Wall Street Journal
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â€œBrilliantly researched.â€ â€”The Atlantic
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â€œA fantastically fun romp through the world of early phone hackers, who sought free long distance, and in the end helped launch the computer era.â€ â€”The Seattle Times
Country USA
Manufacturer Grove Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2018-09-01
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Grove Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2018-09-01
Format	Kindle eBook

Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell

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