“If it hadn’t been for the Blue Boxes, there would have been no Apple. I’m 100% sure of that” So said Steve Jobs of the electronic devices that simulate operators by generating the tones used by a telephone operator’s dialling console, and were typically used from the 1950s by so-called ‘phone phreakers’ to avail themselves of free calls.
On December 6 in the History of Science and Technology auction in New York, Bonhams will offer one of the first digital ‘blue boxes’ designed by Steve Wozniak c.1972 and marketed by Jobs and Wozniak.