Apple’s Steve Jobs and The Woz Sold People Free Long Distance Forever
Nowadays we take technology for granted. Our phones could call all the way to Neptune if anybody worthwhile was living there. But in the 1970s, phone calls were much more expensive and cumbersome. And calls that were outside of your area code? Even more so.
Enter Apple head honchos to-be Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Jobs and Woz were budding nerds who figured out how to scheme the phone companies using a technology called a blue box. They peddled their wares to fellow college students under their “phone phreaking” names “Berkeley Blue” (Woz) and “Oaf Tobar” (Jobs, whose moniker sadly did not follow him throughout his career). For a one-time fee of $170 (give or take $1200 in 2022 money), blue box users could call most anywhere on Earth, assuming the FBI didn’t eventually catch wind.
Woz liked to use his blue box for prank calls. Once, he called the Vatican pretending to be diplomat Henry Kissinger, because that’s simply freaking hilarious. But the whole enterprise is notable because it was the first time the Dueling Steves joined up. The next time would be Apple itself, which means The Jerky Boys more or less created the world we live in today.
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Justin writes more here.
Top image: Paul Piryukov, Jaguar PS/Shutterstock