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My mom refused to get touch-tone service, in the hopes of preventing me from becoming a phone phreak. But I had my touch-tone-enabled friends touch-tone me MCI codes and phone numbers I wanted to call over the phone, and recorded them on a cassette tape recorder, which I could then play back, with the cassette player's mic and speaker cable wired directly into the phone speaker and mic.

Finally there was one long distance service that used speech recognition to dial numbers! It would repeat groups of 3 or 4 digits you spoke, and ask you to verify they were correct with yes or no. If you said no, it would speak each digit back and ask you to verify it: Was the first number 7? ...

The most satisfying way I ever made a free phone call was at the expense of Bell Communications Research (who were up to their ears swimming in as much free phone service as they possibly could give away, so it didn't hurt anyone -- and it was actually with their explicitly spoken consent), and was due to in-band signaling of billing authorization:

Peter Langston (working at Bellcore) created and wrote a classic 1985 Usenix paper about "Eedie & Eddie", whose phone number still rings a bell (in my head at least, since I called it so often):

http://www.langston.com/

http://www.langston.com/Papers/

http://www.langston.com/Papers/2332.pdf

>(201) 644-2332 or Eedie & Eddie on the Wire: An Experiment in Music Generation. Peter S Langston. Bell communications Research, Morristown, New Jersey.

>ABSTRACT: At Bell Communications Research a set of programs running on loosely coupled Unix systems equipped with unusual peripherals forms a setting in which ideas about music may be "aired". This paper describes the hardware and software components of a short automated music concert that is available through the public switched telephone network. Three methods of algorithmic music generation are described.

Eedie & Eddie (And The Reggaebots) - Some Velvet Morning (Peter Langston)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l0Ko1GUiSo

http://www.wfmu.org/365/2003/169.shtml

>At the time I was also running a telephone demo that you could call up to hear samples of music composed for you while-u-wait by the computers in my lab. Most people called the mono telephone number that gave you a monophonic mix of the stereo channels, but you could also call either the left or right channel, or both, one phone on each ear, to get stereo -- this was how I worked from home. The elaborate phone connections were from the telephone switch in Brian Redman's lab.

>When the call would come in, the computers in my lab would start composing the 6 or 7 pieces that were played in the demo, while a voice synthesizer in Brian's lab (Eedie) would accept the call (we paid the long distance on a few collect calls from music researchers in other parts of the world) and introduce the demo, explaining what was going to happen, then the call would be switched over to my lab where another voice synthesizer (Eddie) would take over, introducing each piece as it was played.

>The idea for Eddie's voice came from the overly-happy shipboard computer in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio serial. In the phone demo Eddie would say something like:

>Hi! This is Eddie! Your computer music phone, FRIEND!

>Oh BOY! You are rilly rilly going to like this music, I can TELL!

>[pause]

>First, I'll just make sure that Peter's computer is working, and then we can share-and-ENJOY!

>This is pretty much the kind of thing that Douglas Adams' computer said, and he was named Eddie, so we used Eddie as an homage. Then, when we wanted the voice-synth that answers the phone in Brian's lab to be female, we considered how, later in the Hitchhiker's Guide, Zaphod Beeblebrox chooses a different personality module for the computer and gets a worried old lady's voice -- "This will all end in tears!" but Adams never gives her a name, so I chose "Edie" as a feminized "Eddie". Unfortunately, the DECtalk voice synthesizer we were using pronounced E-d-i-e just like E-d-d-i-e with a short E vowel "eh" at the start, so we had to spell her name E-e-d-i-e in order to get the long E initial vowel sound.

>Anyway, the little chit-chat between Eedie and Eddie at the beginning of the recording of Some Velvet Morning is typical of the sillier moments in the phone demo introductions, and is included as an attempt to familiarize the listener with their strange accents.

When you called (201) 644-2332, the Dectalk speech synthesizer would answer, say "Hi! This is Eddie! Your computer music phone, FRIEND!", wait a few seconds, then cheerfully and sincerely announce, "Yes, operator. I will accept the charges."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtalk

LGR Oddware: $1,200 DECtalk PC Speech Synthesizer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPW2S4fZMJY

Then Eddie would launch into his greeting and introduction to the phone tree of cool demos, like singing songs, telling jokes, generating improvisational music with L-systems or Stochastic Binary Subdivision, playing games, reading news summaries and weather reports, etc.

But then some "music researcher in other parts of the world" realized that it was perfect for making operator assisted third party collect phone calls!

Did you ever trick the phone company into cheerfully accepting the charges of a third party phone call? You will!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operator_assistance

>A third number call or third party call is an operator assisted telephone call that can be billed to the party other than the calling and called party. The operator calls the third number for the party to accept the charges before the call can proceed.

So you could just dial 0, tell the human operator that you want to call any number you wanted, and charge it to (201) 644-2332. Then they would call that Morristown, New Jersey number for authorization, Eddie would answer, the human would ask "Will you accept the charges for a collect call from ... to ...?", Eddie would then cheerfully announce, "Yes, operator, I will accept the charges!", and the human would say "thank you" and hang up on the loosely coupled network of Unix systems with unusual peripherals at Bell Labs, then connect you through for free to whoever in the world you wanted to talk with, for however long you want to talk, charging the call to Bellcore!

"Share and enjoy!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wSBC5Dyds8