Most people who use Sprint today don’t remember its origins, as a private phone network for Southern Pacific Railroad. But those of us growing up in the 1970s and 1980s remember those days, and the days of phone phreaking.
As NPR reported today, the NY Times is reporting the death of Joybubbles. Joybubbles, who was originally known as Joe Engressia, was one of the original phone phreakers. With an IQ of 172, perfect pitch and whistling ability, and a love of telephones, he learned to use and abuse the phone system. According to the obit, “Joybubbles loved the phone company, reported problems he had illegally discovered and even said he had planned his own arrest on fraud charges to get a phone job. And so he did, twice.”
In 1988, according to the article, he made the decision to stay 5 forever. He amassed piles of toys, Jack and Jill magazines and imaginary friends, and he took a name he said made people smile. His second life as a youngster included becoming a minister in his own Church of Eternal Childhood and collecting tapes of every “Mr. Rogers” episode.
The obituary makes fascinating reading. In my early days at UCLA (around 1979-1980), I had some contact with some phone phreakers of the era, who mostly used Sprint and MCI to make phone calls. I never got into that subculture (I was more into the ethical hacking subculture of the UCLA Computer Club), but I do remember those type of phreakers well.
