Table of Contents
Shorting Out The Handset Of A Pay Phone To Make Free Phone Calls
| Field | Phone Phreaking, adolescent pranks, petty crime |
| Went Obsolete | May still work - find a rotary dial pay phojne |
| Made Obsolete By | The demise of analog |
| Knowledge Assumed | School yard gossip |
| When useful | When Mom forgot to pick you up… |
– Glad someone anonymous brought this up. I remember, in the Sixties, in a SoCal? Junior High, I learned you could take a paper clip and stick it into the mouthpiece of a payphone, ground it on the dial stop and the phone would sound as if a quarter had been dropped. Even fooled operators on long distance phone calls.
Life was so simple then…
Pay phones now have armored cords to connect the handset to the body of the phone. This, combined with changes in the construction of the phone body, namely how the whole system is grounded, prevent users from shorting out the handset. Additionally changes to the signalling system mean that even a successful short would be useless in this regard.
