The person Craig S. Karpel mentioned in this interesting history is a dear friend for decades …..who would have thunk that his interest led to “Apple” even though he has been the apple of my eyes for years…..rsk
The writer talks about his eerily prescient 1971 Esquire classic about “phone phreaks,” and how it inspired Steve Jobs (who later said, “If we hadn’t made blue boxes, there would have been no Apple.”)http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/annotation-tuesday-ron-rosenbaum-and-the-secrets-of-the-little-blue-box/
Some writers work for decades before one of their pieces gets widespread attention. Ron Rosenbaum managed to pull it off with his second long-form magazine article.
Rosenbaum’s 1971 Esquire piece, “Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” tells the story of an underground network of telephone hackers – dubbed “phone phreaks” – who devised a small box that enabled them to control the long-distance phone network. Rosenbaum’s article quickly became a cult classic and made overnight celebrities of the phone phreaks, especially a character named Captain Crunch, who made the phone network dance to his tune by blowing a toy whistle given away in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal.
It touched a nerve maybe because it combines old-fashioned underground sci-fi intrigue vs. the tech surveillance state. And everybody likes the band of little guys taking on the Big Money Goliath using brains instead of tanks.
Rosenbaum’s article is the rare magazine story that not only chronicled history, it also shaped it. A tech enthusiast named Steve Wozniak read Rosenbaum’s piece, and then showed it to his friend Steve Jobs. Before long, the two collaborated on building and selling their own blue boxes. It was the first product release of what would eventually become one of the world’s most valuable companies – Apple.
The piece also would turn out to be remarkably prescient, revealing how some of the phone hackers were already turning their attention to an even more tempting target – computer networks.
With the apparent Russian hack of the U.S. presidential election dominating headlines worldwide, it seemed a perfect time to revisit this 46-year-old gem, which helped launch a career that has included the publication of several books, including “Explaining Hitler,” “The Shakespeare Wars,” “How the End Begins” and a collection of his longform essays and reporting, “The Secret Parts of Fortune,” with nonfiction from The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Slate and The New York Observer, among others.
I chatted with Rosenbaum about “The Secrets of the Little Blue Box,” which wasrecently republished as part of the Amazon Singles Classics series. His answers have been slightly edited.
What was the genesis of this piece?
It came from Esquire. Just for context, this was during the last couple years of the editorship of the late Harold Hayes, part Marine sergeant, part avant, avant gardiste. A great editor on all levels who, more than anyone of the other claimants, deserves credit as a founder of what we now think of as “The New Journalism.” There was no such name or aesthetic doctrine written down when I was there, just a lot of writers given freedom to tell their stories in sometimes unconventional ways. But it was still at its heart about intensive reporting, immersive storytelling, not stylistic tricks. Read Terry Southern’s knockout hilarious evocation of the place in the short story called “Blood of a Wig.” I advise every journalist to read it. It’s in one of his collections, “Red Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes.”
The Blue Box piece was only my second magazine story. I had been writing for the Village Voice for a year and a half after the prospect of a snoozy academic career drove me out of the study of English lit at Yale graduate school, where they were grinding literature into theory. I thought journalism offered adventure and excitement to a kid from a relatively sheltered background. I wanted to hang out with cops and criminals. I stumbled into a couple of lucky breaks – right place at the right time – and got to do it.
A friend and colleague from the Voice and Esquire, Craig S. Karpel, had spent the summer in Northern California and met a lawyer named Metzger who was repping the blue box maker and dealer I called “Al Gilbertson” (the real person wanted anonymity). Craig sent a memo to the East Coast about this underground network of phone phreaks.
