Confectionery & the history of telecoms

Predicting telecoms' major advances by looking at confectionery novelties

Junk food has been associated with computing since the hacker culture started back in the 60s. In 1990, Software Development started its annual Jolt awards, inspired by the high-caffeine drink needed for long stretches at the keyboard. Cookies existed before the web and were used as transaction IDs.

Junk food and confectionery in particular has also been an inspiration for technology innovations especially in telecoms...

• In the 70s, John T Draper, aka Cap'n Crunch, got his handle when he discovered that the plastic prize whistle found in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes produced a 2600 Hz tone. As it happened, back then, the phone system used inband signalling and 2600 Hz was the tone used to access Bell's trunking system. Cap'n Crunch and other phreakers infamously showed the weaknesses of inband signaling. This led to out-of-band signaling and to the ITU Signaling System 7 or SS7.
• Fast forward to the Pringles potato chips, and you witness the birth of cheap 802.11b community networks. Best aerials and a few crisps thanks to a box of Pringles! (Dog food cans also makes good cantennas.)
• One of the classic shapes of mobile phones is known as the candy bar. It has survived healthier shapes such as the banana and the taco phones, though the Mars bar phone has long disappeared. And you need juice to power all these phones.

If you want to earn a living as a telecoms analyst, better start keeping up-to-date with the latest confectionery theories!