For a generation of today’s youths raised on smartphones, multi megabit downloads and digital home phones before them, the idea that the phone system was once primitive enough that it could be manipulated with a plastic toy whistle is at once both strange and tantalizing. But that’s exactly what happened back in the 1970s, when natural curiosity about evolving phone networks birthed a generation of inquisitive “phone phreaks” who spent considerable time and energy poking and prodding the phone network to see what was going on behind that rotary handset. They were the precursors to today’s network hackers, sharing tips and tactics not by closed and encrypted message groups but by printed newsletters distributed by mail. More than anything it was, erstwhile phreaker Phil Lapsley told Cybercrime Magazine, a time of discovery. “I’m a curious person, which is one of the hallmarks of phone phreaks,” explained Lapsley, whose 2014 book Exploding the Phone traces his journey through the phreaking world.