Joybubbles
Joybubbles (May 25, 1949 – August 8, 2007), born Josef Carl Engressia, Jr. in Richmond, Virginia, USA, was an early phone phreak. Born blind, he became interested in telephones at age four. He had absolute pitch, and was able to whistle 2600 hertz into a telephone, an operator tone also used by blue box phreaking devices. Joybubbles said that he had an IQ of “172 or something". Joybubbles died at his Minneapolis home on August 8, 2007 (aged 58). According to his death certificate, he died of "natural causes" with "congestive heart failure" as a contributing condition.
As a five-year-old, Engressia discovered he could dial phone numbers by clicking the hang-up switch rapidly ("tapping"), and at the age of 7 he accidentally discovered that whistling at certain frequencies could activate phone switches.
A student at the University of South Florida in the late 1960s, he was given the nickname “Whistler” due to his ability to place free long-distance phone calls by whistling the proper tones with his mouth. After a Canadian operator reported him for selling such calls for $1 at the university, he was suspended and fined $25 but soon reinstated. He later graduated with a degree in philosophy and moved to Tennessee.
According to FBI records, the phone company SBT&T first noticed his phreaking activities in summer 1968, and an employee of the Florida Bell Telephone Company illegally monitored Engressia’s telephone conversations and divulged them to the FBI.
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