Origins of looping

["Byron Howell" <howell.byron@gmail.com>]

Hi Loopers

In my academic wanderings I came across this little story.


Very early one morning in 1969 a battered
Volkswagen microbus rolled off a freeway ramp in
California's Livermore Valley. It pulled into a closed
gas station and, out of view of the road in the back,
came to a halt near a pair of especially lonely
telephone booths. A man known as Captain Crunch,
an unemployed engineer, hopped out of the van. He
threw open its side doors and snaked a long, black
cable to one of the telephone booths. Within
moments he had sounded the 2,600 cycles per
second signal that gave him free access to the world
telephone system. Making connection after connec-
tion, he sent his call to Tokyo, India, Greece, South
Africa, South America, New York, and finally back
to the telephone booth next to him. He picked up the
ringing phone and, holding the other handset, spoke
to himself around the world. The feeling, he confided
later, came close to religious ecstasy. Yet his
message was, in a word, prosaic: "Hello, test one,
test two, test three."