Phreaking

Phreaking is a word formed by combining the first letters of the words phone and freaking which means playing around with telephones in a cool way. Back in the days when telephones had cords and dials, some people figured out ways to make free long distance calls by making special tones that fooled the phone company into thinking the call was local instead of long distance.

Sounds a bit like magic but it's not. It's like tricking the phone system by making sounds that are like secret codes. You know how when you press a button on the phone and it makes a sound? Well, back then phones used to have different sounds for different things, and if you could make certain sounds together, you could do things like disconnect someone else's call or even make free long-distance calls.

Phreakers were people who knew how to make those sounds and use them to control the phone system. They were like computer hackers, but for telephones. They also created something called blue boxes, which were devices that could generate the special tones to make free long-distance calls.

But as technology improved, phreaking became less common because the phone companies figured out how to prevent people from making free calls. What once seemed like magic is now just a part of history.