Author Topic: Found a scammer/phreak artifact from 1977  (Read 1335 times)

Offline Zazen

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Found a scammer/phreak artifact from 1977
« on: April 28, 2007, 11:08:21 PM »
I like old books, so I rifle through used books a lot. A few weeks ago I found what looked like a first edition of "Steal This Book" in a used book store and snagged it for a couple of bucks. I've since learned that real first editions look almost exactly like mine but lack an index. Mine has an index. Oh well, it's still a pretty early copy.

Stuck inside the book, however, is this cool purple card titled "Peoples Telephone Kompany" and dated 1977. It has information on how to scam phone calls and generate credit card numbers. It's written entirely in some kind of psychadelic leet-speak, kind of a cross between super old H/P text files and liner notes from a Gong album. I can't seem to find any information about this card. Did it come with some edition of the book? Was it some famous thing in its own right?

Anyway, I scanned it in case anyone wants to see. It folds out and the inside has a grid filled with ramblings about uranus and so on. Definite acid-trip stuff.

Offline rbcp

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Re: Found a scammer/phreak artifact from 1977
« Reply #1 on: April 29, 2007, 07:50:09 AM »
I've never heard of that card but that's a really nice find!  I looked at all the Steal This Book listings on Ebay but didn't find any references to the purple card.  I'm checking Amazon reviews right now, but so far I've still found nothing on it.