Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell

"A rollicking history of the telephone system and the hackers who exploited its flaws." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Before smartphones, back even before the Internet and personal computers, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system. Starting with Alexander Graham Bell's revolutionary "harmonic telegraph," by the middle of the twentieth century the phone system had grown into something...