See the update in this post.
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
© Matrixsynth - All posts are presented here for informative, historical and educative purposes as applicable within fair use.
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MATRIXSYNTH - EVERYTHING SYNTH
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Steve Wozniak's "Blue Box"
ReplyDeleteThe Blue Box was a device very popular in the 70's and 80's.
ReplyDeleteWas used to make free calls, mainly international calls.
Basically the use was: make a call to a free number (1-800) use one key of the keyboard to send a special tone to interrupt the call when is ringing but keep the telecommunication channel (this tone was sending, keeping the speaker showing in the photo in front of the telephone mic) once in this state, it was as you being in a Central Office can make all kind of calls using this special keyboard that have different tones.
People using computers from the 80's have very aware about this device because before the Internet the way to communicate and share, was through the BBS all around the world. For people who don't know that BBS was, was a one-to-one communication between your computer and a kind of server, using a modem.
Today is useless because the massive use of Blue Box, forced telecoms to change the signaling systems in Central Offices to prevent call frauds.
Curiously, some tones of the Blue Box (slightly different, to regular tones on the normal phone) was used in several songs of the 80's as if was a normal call. A very popular tone was 2600 Hz. this tone mainly was in charge to cut the call and keep the channel. I can't remember clearly but I think "Information Society" was one band that used this tones, or maybe another high-tek band ;)