A cereal-box whistle that could trick the phone system into free calls

In today's edition of Dan Lewis's excellent Now I Know newsletter, there's a photo of a red plastic whistle that used to come in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal in the 1960s. Besides being a cool-looking whistle, it had a unique property that made it popular among phone hackers. — Read the rest The post A cereal-box whistle that could trick the phone system into free calls appeared first on Boing Boing.

  Updates   Sep 9, 2026   0   33  Add to Reading List
A cereal-box whistle that could trick the phone system into free calls












Cap'n Crunch whistle — 1971markus / CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

In today's edition of Dan Lewis's excellent Now I Know newsletter, there's a photo of a red plastic whistle that used to come in boxes of Cap'n Crunch cereal in the 1960s. Besides being a cool-looking whistle, it had a unique property that made it popular among phone hackers. — Read the rest

The post A cereal-box whistle that could trick the phone system into free calls appeared first on Boing Boing.

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