Bell System Technical Journal archives published

Ric Werme ewerme at comcast.net
Sun Oct 31 13:02:46 EDT 2010


>   Some choice pickings:

> "In-Band Single-Frequency Signaling" (1954)
> This was the paper that enabled the infamous "blue boxes"
> http://bstj.bell-labs.com/oldfiles/year.1954/BSTJ.1954.3306.html

I think this may have only the 2600 hz tone used to get control of
the trunk.  The other signaling was dual tone (multi tone in the articles),
and IIRC the key article was (from
http://www.historyofphonephreaking.org/docs.php ):

Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching by Breen and Dahlbom,
November 1960 (14 Mbytes) -- often cited as the article that gave away the
keys to the kingdom.

There files are downloading a log faster at the moment, see
http://www.historyofphonephreaking.org/docs/breen1960.pdf

I have one key article from college days, I'm not certain this is it.
The only thing we did with it was to capture a trunk line.  A housemate
had a "black box", good for free incoming calls, worth a visit early
in the morning from Ma Bell and the authorities.  The phone was in my name,
so that's what they put on the arrest and search warrants.

It was a group raid, no blue boxes found.  The sex crimes offices were vacant
(it was early morning), so that's where I got taken while arranging for the
charges to be dropped.


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