The History of 2600

The name 2600 originated from a phreaker discovery in the 1960s that the transmission of a 2600 hertz tone over a long-distance trunk connection gained access to a mode called operator mode, which allowed phreakers to make long distance calls for free, among other things.

A famous phreaker named John Draper (known as "Cap'n Crunch") used a small whistle found in a Cap'n Crunch cereal box (hence the nickname), which replicated the 2600Hz frequency perfectly. The 2600 Quarterly was started in 1984 by Emmanuel Goldstein, who still publishes and edits the magazine. The magazine is released quarterly in January, April, July and October. In addition to the magazine, hundreds of cities across the world hold 2600 meetings.

2600 also established a conference in the United States called H.O.P.E (Hackers On Planet Earth), which generally occur every 2years.

2600 has also published a full length documentary about the hacker named Kevin Mitnick, the Free Kevin movement and the hacker world, entitled Freedom Downtime.

2600 has also published a compilation of articles from the magazine entitled "The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey". The book was made available from July 28th 2008.

Also, Goldstein hosts two radio shows named "Off The Wall" and "Off The Hook". These are broadcasted on a few radio stations, but episodes of this can be downloaded directly from the official worldwide 2600 website.