John Draper
| John Draper | |
|---|---|
Draper at Maker Faire Berlin in 2015
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| Born |
John Thomas Draper March 11, 1943 |
| Residence | Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. |
| Other names | Captain Crunch, Crunch, Crunchman |
| Occupation | Computer programmer, former phone phreak |
| Website | www.webcrunchers.com & www.crunchcreations.com/ |
John Thomas Draper (born March 11, 1943), also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman (after the Cap'n Crunch breakfast cereal mascot), is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a legendary figure within the computer programming world and the hacker and security community. Draper has long maintained a nomadic lifestyle; as of May 2013, he resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Draper is the son of a United States Air Force engineer; he has characterized his father as a distant and imposing figure. As a child, he built a home radio station from discarded military components. He was frequently bullied in school and briefly received psychological treatment due to a perceived "chemical imbalance." After taking college courses, Draper himself entered the Air Force in 1964. While stationed in Alaska, he helped his fellow servicemen make free phone calls home by devising access to a local telephone switchboard. After Alaska, he was stationed at Charleston Air Force Station in Maine. In 1967, he created WKOS [W-"chaos"], a pirate station in nearby Dover-Foxcroft, but had to shut it down when a legitimate radio station, WDME, objected. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force as an airman first class or sergeant in 1968. Thereafter, he relocated to the incipient Silicon Valley and briefly held military-related positions with National Semiconductor (as an engineering technician) and Hugle International (tasked with working on an early cordless telephone design) while concurrently enrolled at De Anza College, where he studied part-time through 1972. During this period, he also worked as an engineer/DJ for KKUP in Cupertino, California and adopted the countercultural ethos of the times, including long hair and a predilection for marijuana. Draper is renowned for his lifelong intolerance of tobacco smoke and his poor personal hygiene.
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