I heard this guy a few times on Denver talks shows when I first moved to
denver.  He was a character, to say the least,  as you will read below.
Thanks Todd and Lelia for sending this over.  It was fun to read some
details about his life.

Phil.


                > >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2007 01:59:25 -0700
> > From: BlindNews Mailing List
> > <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: Blind News <[log in to unmask]>
> > Subject: Famous phone hacker "Joybubbles" dies.
> >
> >
> > Famous phone hacker "Joybubbles" dies.
> >
> >
> > "Phone phreak" spent years in Denver,
> > troubleshooting for Ma Bell.
> >
> >
> > By Douglas Martin
> > The New York Times
> > Denver Post - Denver,CO,USA
> > 08/20/2007.
> >
> >
> > Joybubbles (the legal name of the former Joe
> > Engressia since 1991), a blind
> > genius with perfect pitch who accidentally found he
> > could make free phone
> > calls by whistling tones and went on to play a
> > pivotal role in the 1970s
> > subculture of "phone phreaks," died Aug. 8 in
> > Minneapolis.
> >
> > He was 58, though he had chosen in 1988 to remain 5
> > forever, and had the
> > toys and teddy bears to prove it. The cause of death
> > has not been
> > determined, said Steven Gibb, a friend and the
> > executor of the Joybubbles
> > estate.
> >
> > Joybubbles, who was blind at birth, was a famous
> > part of what began as a
> > scattered, socially awkward group of precocious
> > teens and post-teens
> > fascinated with exploring the phone system. Foiling
> > it passed for high-tech
> > high jinks in the '70s.
> >
> > "It was the only game in town if you wanted to play
> > with a computer," said
> > Phil Lapsley, who is writing a book on the phone
> > phreaks. Later, other blind
> > whistlers appeared, but in 1957, Joybubbles may have
> > been the first person
> > to whistle his way into the heart of Ma Bell.
> >
> > Phreaks were precursors of today's computer hackers,
> > and, like some of them,
> > Joybubbles ran afoul of the law. Not a few phreaks
> > were computer pioneers,
> > including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of
> > Apple.
> >
> > Joybubbles felt that being abused at a school for
> > the blind and being pushed
> > by his mother to live up to his 172 IQ had robbed
> > him of childhood. So he
> > amassed piles of toys, Jack and Jill magazines and
> > imaginary friends, and he
> > took a name he said made people smile.
> >
> > But he never lost his ardor for phones, and old
> > phone phreaks and younger
> > would-have-beens kept calling. Joybubbles loved the
> > phone company, reported
> > problems he had illegally discovered and even said
> > he had planned his own
> > arrest on fraud charges to get a phone job. And so
> > he did, twice.
> >
> > Well before the mid-1970s, when digitalization ended
> > the tone-based system,
> > Joybubbles had stopped stealing calls. But he was
> > already a legend: he had
> > phoned around the world, talking into one phone and
> > listening to himself on
> > another.
> >
> > In an article in Esquire in 1971, the writer Ron
> > Rosenbaum called Joybubbles
> > the catalyst uniting disparate phreaks.
> >
> > Particularly after news accounts of his suspension
> > from college in 1968 and
> > conviction in 1971 for phone violations, he became a
> > nerve center of the
> > movement.
> >
> > "Every night he sits like a sightless spider in his
> > little apartment
> > receiving messages from every tendril of its web,"
> > Rosenbaum wrote.
> >
> > Josef Carl Engressia Jr. was born May 25, 1949, and
> > moved often because his
> > father was a school-picture photographer. At 4 or 5,
> > he learned to dial by
> > using the hookswitch like a telegraph key. Four
> > years later, he discovered
> > that he could disconnect a call by whistling. He
> > found this out when he
> > imitated a sound in the background on a
> > long-distance call and the line cut
> > off. It turned out that his whistle precisely
> > replicated a crucial phone
> > company signal, a 2,600-cycles-per-second tone.
> >
> > Joybubbles' parents had no phone for five years
> > because of their son's
> > obsession. Later, his mother encouraged it by
> > reading him technical books.
> > His high school yearbook photo showed him in a phone
> > booth.
> >
> > By the time he was a student at the University of
> > South Florida, Joybubbles
> > was dialing toll-free or nonworking numbers to reach
> > a distant switching
> > point. Unbeknownst to telephone operators, he could
> > use sounds to dial
> > another number, free. He could then jump anywhere in
> > the phone system.
> >
> > He was disconnected from college after being caught
> > making calls for friends
> > at $1 a call. In 1971, he moved to Memphis, where he
> > was convicted of phone
> > fraud. In Millington, Tenn., he was hired to clean
> > phones, a job he hated.
> > In 1975, he moved to Denver to ferret out problems
> > in Mountain Bell's
> > network.
> >
> > He tired of that and moved to Minneapolis on June
> > 12, 1982, partly because
> > that date's numerical representation of 6-12 is the
> > same as the city's area
> > code. He advertised for people yearning to discuss
> > things telephonic and
> > weaved a web of phone lines to accommodate them. He
> > lived on Social Security
> > disability payments and part-time jobs like letting
> > university agriculture
> > researchers use his superb sense of smell to
> > investigate how to control the
> > odor of hog excrement.
> >
> > Joybubbles is survived by his mother, Esther
> > Engressia, and his sister, Toni
> > Engressia, both of Homestead, Fla.
> >
> > His second life as a youngster included becoming a
> > minister in his own
> > Church of Eternal Childhood and collecting tapes of
> > every "Mr. Rogers"
> > episode. When asked why Mr. Rogers mattered, he
> > said: "When you're playing
> > and you're just you, powerful things happen."
> >
> > Copyright 2007 The Denver Post or other copyright
> > holders.
> >
> >
> > http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_6669861
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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