Communications
Telephone network → phone phreaking → amateur radio → resilient mesh networks
John Draper · Cap’n Crunch · KK7YQS
I wanted to know what was happening inside.
Electronics. Radio. Communications. Computers. Programming. One lifelong pursuit of the hidden rules inside the world’s biggest systems.
Maker Faire Berlin / 2015
THE TECHNOLOGY CHANGED.THE CURIOSITY DIDN’T.THE TECHNOLOGY CHANGED.
Four ways in
Choose a threshold
Open a door.
Follow the signal.
John’s life is not a straight timeline. Enter through the part of the story that pulls you in.
The short version
“Anyone can learn a trick. The discovery is realizing that every system has rules—and rules can be understood.”
Some people know me as the guy with the blue box. Others know EasyWriter, the early word processor I created. A few know me as the ham operator still watching the ionosphere at night. All of that is true. None of it is the whole story.
The story most people know
A toy whistle. A nationwide network. A conversation with the machine.
A whistle once packed in Cap’n Crunch cereal happened to produce a tone at 2600 Hz—the frequency AT&T’s long-distance network used to signal an idle trunk. The whistle became famous. Understanding the network was the real discovery.
Enter chapter three
The connecting threads
One instinct.
Three frequencies.
Programming
Early personal computers → EasyWriter → AI-assisted development → TimeTrack&Invoice
Signals
Early electronics → Air Force radar → telephone signaling → SDR → WaveWatch
On the bench right now
This story is still being written.
PROJECT / 01
WaveWatch
Live HF propagation and ionospheric research, built to answer one question: where can I communicate right now, and why?
PROJECT / 02
Resilient Communications
Portable, low-power mesh networks that keep people connected when normal infrastructure isn’t available.
PROJECT / 03
TimeTrack&Invoice
A bridge across five decades: from EasyWriter to an app built for the phone in your pocket.
You should never reach a point here where it feels like my story ended in the 1970s.
It didn’t.