I’ve always wondered
When I was in college (long long ago) I was making a call at a pay phone (does anyone remember those?). I put my coins in and waited for it to connect. But instead of that, an operator came on and said “Can you the coins in again? They went in too fast for me to count them.” And the coins came back out into the coin return. Totally confused, I put them back in again. “Thank you.” he said. And then my call connected.
I’ve always suspected the guy was just playing a joke on me, but I’ve always been too embarrassed to ask anyone. Now that it has been years and years since the incident, and my self esteem is far too low to be bruised any further, I have to ask, was I being a total fool by believing him?
December 24th, 2007 02:11
I bet you were.
heeee!
December 24th, 2007 08:40
No - he was telling the truth. This was how the “blue boxes” worked- they could send the tones the phone would make to register coins without any actual coins.
Merry Christmas, Jon.
December 24th, 2007 13:41
I am totally confused. I’ll believe anything.
December 24th, 2007 20:24
I’d have believed it. I believe everything. Happy Holidays to you Jon.
December 24th, 2007 22:17
That was some old school technology so why not? It isn’t like the phones had electronic coin readers in them.
Merry Christmas - have fun!
December 27th, 2007 17:29
THey just removed a payphone from the hallway of my school and there is a big yucky hole there now. So sad.
December 28th, 2007 01:54
Jank is right - except it was a “red box”, not a “blue box”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_box_(phreaking)
In a nutshell, when you put in a quarter the pay phone made a five tones in rapid succession (one for every five cents worth of credit) and the phone network recognized those tones as credit. If you put the coins in too fast the system wouldn’t be able to count all of the credit.
So if they couldn’t count it all they would refund the money and ask that you put the coins back in a bit more slowly so they could count it all.
(If you had a red box you could just play the tones in the earpiece of the pay phone instead of putting coins in the machine..)
December 30th, 2007 21:17
Three years ago this week you commented on my new blog to become the first “stranger” to read my running accounts. You joined Susie as my first readers and for that I say thank you and Happy New Year. May we have another year that comes close to the best times we had in the last three.
December 31st, 2007 13:22
you dialed the only honest operator there was.
Happy New Year!!
January 2nd, 2008 12:43
I would have never thought anything of it. Heyyy, I am back on the blogs,, :) come on by for a visit.