16 lines
2.6 KiB
HTML
16 lines
2.6 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>blue box</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../B.html" title="B"/><link rel="previous" href="BLT.html" title="BLT"/><link rel="next" href="Blue-Glue.html" title="Blue Glue"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">blue box</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="BLT.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">B</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="Blue-Glue.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="blue-box"/><dt xmlns="" id="blue-box"><b>blue box</b></dt></dt><dd><p> <span class="grammar">n.</span> </p></dd><dd><p> 1. obs. Once upon a time, before all-digital switches made it
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possible for the phone companies to move them out of band, one could
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actually hear the switching tones used to route long-distance calls. Early
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<a href="../P/phreaker.html"><i class="glossterm">phreaker</i></a>s built devices called <span class="firstterm">blue boxes</span> that could reproduce these tones,
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which could be used to commandeer portions of the phone network. (This was
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not as hard as it may sound; one early phreak acquired the sobriquet
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“<span class="quote">Captain Crunch</span>” after he proved that he could generate
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switching tones with a plastic whistle pulled out of a box of Captain
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Crunch cereal!) There were other colors of box with more specialized
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phreaking uses; red boxes, black boxes, silver boxes, etc. There were
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boxes of <a href="http://www.ElfQrin.com/docs/hakref/phrkbox/phreakboxes.html" target="_top"> other
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colors</a> as well, but the blue box was the original and
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archetype. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. <span class="grammar">n.</span> An
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<a href="../I/IBM.html"><i class="glossterm">IBM</i></a> machine, especially a large (non-PC) one.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="BLT.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../B.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="Blue-Glue.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">BLT </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Blue Glue</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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