re: #83 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

I was never a phone phreaker but it was a REVELATION to me when I discovered that you could dial numbers by pressing the hang-up button just right. Like, instead of dialing “5” on the rotary dial you could just press the hang-up switch 5 times in rhythmic succession and get the same result. It was totally useless but it definitely made me curious about how the phone system actually worked.

My father taught me to do that.
It wasn’t always useless. There were dial locks on some phones, and you could still call by tapping in the number.