Joybubbles: The Amazing Story of the Most Famous Freaker on the Planet.

[Man]

He had never seen a telephone in his life because he was born blind. However, he is considered the greatest phone phreaker: with perfect pitch, he could whistle a sequence of signals into the telephone receiver that allowed him to call anywhere in the world for free. His name was Joseph Engressia, but he preferred to call himself Joybubbles. This is his story.

Joseph Carl Engressia Jr. was born in 1949 in Richmond, Virginia. His parents sent him to a school for the blind, since Joseph was born completely blind. He later recalled that he was treated badly at school, and once he even became a victim of violence from one of the teachers, which caused him psychological trauma for life. His parents wanted the boy to grow up to be an excellent student, and therefore Joseph spent a lot of time doing homework. One of the few toys at his disposal was an old telephone - the boy was allowed to call relatives and friends in his free time from classes. Around the age of five, while playing with the phone, Joseph learned to dial numbers by briefly pressing the call rejection lever. This method worked fine before the advent of tone dialing and was based on the features of the design of electromechanical telephone exchanges. In pulse dialing mode, each subscriber's number is transmitted to the line using a series of short electrical impulses. Every time you press and release the reset lever, the circuit opens and closes again, creating a pulse. The number of pulses transmitted at a given moment in time corresponds to a specific digit of the phone number. It was this feature of old telephone lines that Joseph Engressia used to dial friends by repeatedly pressing the lever switch.

Like many other people with congenital blindness, Engressia's lack of vision was compensated for by his heightened hearing and excellent musical abilities. Not only did he perfectly hear the nuances of various melodies, but he could also accurately reproduce sounds, delighting those around him. And then, when Joseph turned nine, a seemingly insignificant event occurred that turned his entire future life upside down. During another telephone conversation, Engressia whistled into the receiver, and the connection was interrupted. It turned out that the boy whistled at a frequency of 2600 Hz, which was used by AT&T telephone exchanges to manage connections.

Joseph began to study this phenomenon, and soon learned to control the telephone system by whistling, interrupting calls and transferring them to other lines. At that time, he did not yet know the name of the phenomenon he had discovered, but without suspecting it, Joseph Engressia became one of the first phreakers - hackers of telephone networks. Later, other phreakers used various devices to imitate the service tones of telephone exchanges. Thus, the famous phreak and hacker John Draper used a toy whistle from a box of cornflakes for this, and more advanced phreakers of the 70s, like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, made clever electronic devices with a speaker called the Blue Box. In the case of Joseph Engressia, he himself acted as such a device.

This video shows Joseph Engressia controlling a telephone line by whistling, without the use of any special devices.

Joe regularly entertained his classmates with his "telephone tricks." He could whistle not only popular melodies from memory, but also the signals that controlled the telephone lines. So if one of his friends wanted to make a free call, he knew who to contact. Young Joseph not only manipulated calls, but also began to understand how telecommunications worked, ordering technical literature on telephony from libraries for the blind and absorbing hundreds of pages of it. This allowed him to delve deeper into the world of technology and telephone systems.

After successfully graduating from school, Engressia entered the University of South Florida, where he majored in philosophy, but as a student, he did not abandon his hobbies. Having learned to make long-distance and international calls for free, Joseph began selling this service to his classmates for one dollar, as he later recalled, not for profit, but out of pure hooliganism. That's where he got caught: as a result of a hastily conducted investigation in 1968, Engressia was expelled from the university and fined $25. He later managed to reinstate himself and complete his studies.

In his spare time, Engressia continued to hack telephone networks for his own entertainment: this is when the pseudonym "Joybubbles" (roughly translated as "bubbles of fun", "soap bubbles") was born, under which he became known in the phreak community. Joseph called random numbers and had long conversations with subscribers, sometimes he called commercial or public organizations and arranged pranks that brought him untold pleasure. Unlike many of his colleagues, Joybubbles never used his own skills for harm or illegal enrichment. He was interested in the technology itself and the opportunity to communicate with the world for free. Joseph often shared his accumulated knowledge and taught others the art of telephone hacking completely free of charge, but always insisted on an ethical approach. By the beginning of the 70s, Joybubbles had become a very well-known and authoritative figure in the phreak community, and, like other phone hackers, came under secret surveillance by the FBI.

One of Engressia's favorite pastimes was calling the numbers of automatic time services in different cities. He switched between time zones and listened to the exact time, enjoying his unlimited power over the telephone network. Joseph often called street pay phones located in different parts of the country and even in other countries and chatted with random passers-by. Once, Joybubbles got through to the White House on a bet: he penetrated the AT&T telephone network and, using a whistle, directed the call to the direct line of the US government, thus demonstrating his own abilities.

In 1971, Esquire magazine published an article about “phone hippies,” among whom Joe Engressia was mentioned. This article attracted public attention to the phenomenon of phreaking, and not least, law enforcement agencies. As a result, Joseph Engressia was arrested for the second time on charges of telephone fraud and sentenced to community service. Since Joseph understood telephony, he was sent to work at one of the AT&T companies, where he cleaned public telephones - he later recalled that this was perhaps the worst period of his life.

In 1975, he decided to finally quit phreaking. Engressia moved to Denver, but due to his blindness, he could not find a job for a long time. Surprisingly, FBI agents who had previously accused Joseph of illegal activity helped him with employment: under their protection, Joybubbles got a job in the technical support service of the Mountain Bell telephone company, where he was engaged in setting up equipment and helping to solve problems on subscriber lines. Joseph recalled that thanks to the knowledge he gained during his time as a phreaker, he could do more than some of his colleagues with engineering degrees.

Over time, the monotonous work at the phone company became boring for Joseph. He quit Mountain Bell, moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and began living on a disability pension. To do something useful, Engressia started a phone service called “Stories and Stuff” from his home – he told funny stories over the phone to seriously ill people and acted as a consultant for blind children. At the same time, Joseph continued to be interested in technology, but now from the point of view of its use for good purposes. Engressia wrote articles, often spoke at technical events, sharing his experiences and philosophy. His stories about the early days of phreaking were full of humor, which made him a favorite guest at hacker conferences.

In 1991, Joseph Engressia officially changed his name to Joybubbles. As he grew older, he began to realize that his past did not determine his future, so he decided to return to the happiest period of his life - to his childhood, before he first stepped over the threshold of the school for blind children. Joybubbles declared that from now on and forever he would be five years old. And for other such people who decided to remain forever in kindergarten age, he founded the Church of Eternal Childhood under the motto "we will not grow up!"

The Church of Eternal Childhood was not a religious institution, but rather the embodiment of its founder’s personal desire to return to the past, to preserve the simplicity and spontaneity of childhood. Joybubbles believed that the qualities of a child—curiosity, joy, playfulness, and free spirit—were sacred and worth cultivating throughout life. He wanted to create a space, both conceptual and physical, where these qualities could be fully expressed, where one could find a brief respite from the cynicism of the adult world.

Although the Church of Eternal Childhood never held regular services or meetings, it became the foundation of Joseph’s personal spiritual journey. Joybubbles was an avid collector of children’s radio programs and records, especially old radio shows. He started a “cassette ministry” at his church, sending out free audio cassettes of these shows, along with his own quirky musings, to anyone who asked for them. This outreach was part of Engressia’s self-imposed mission to spread joy around the world. The Church also maintained a toll-free hotline that anyone could call in times of need, whether to chat about anything, get support, or listen to a funny story.

On August 8, 2007, Joseph Engressia was found lifeless in his home, with doctors declaring congestive heart failure as the cause of death. It is believed that his passing marked the end of the phone phreaks: Joybubbles was one of the last “technohippies” of the 70s. But perhaps he was the one who proved that the true magic of technology lies not in the machines, but in the people who operate them. Engressia inspired many people to explore telecommunications and find new ways to use technology, and most importantly, he proved that even a member of the “cyber underground” can dedicate their lives to selflessly helping others.

If they want to, of course.

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