Been getting some searches for John Draper lately. Here’s a post from January 2007 to satisfy all you Cap’n Crunch seekers.
January 13, 2007
Cap’n Crunch in the Journal
Today’s Wall Street Journal features Cap’n Crunch, aka John Draper, on the cover, bringing back some memories. John Draper, for those who don’t know, is the person who discovered that the whistle inside the boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal emitted the 2600 Hz tone necessary to shift the old switches in use back in the 70′s into operator mode, enabling free phone calls. He built/designed the blue box that was integrated into the first Apple computers.
Unfortunately life has dealt him some hard knocks, and he lives on the margins of society, which the Journal article describes. This brings back memories. I remember meeting the Cap’n back in 1993 when I first moved to California. I met him I beleive at an outdoor ‘Your Sister’s House” party. (The Journal article also notes his involvement in the “rave” scene.) I was completely floored and humbled to see such a legend partying with the rest of us.
Only later did I realize that life and prison hadn’t treated him so well, and he wasn’t right in the head. It turned out that he liked to prey on young hacker/raver boys, who were in awe of his legendary status… Thus it took such a kid longer to realize his creepy nature. Most of my hacker/raver friends from those days had Cap’n Crunch stories, unfortunately they were generally not good ones.
I feel badly for him though. He was a legend, and its sad that he hasn’t been able to cope over the years.
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