How Cap’n Crunch Cereal Helped Give Rise to Apple Computers
The story of a toy, two teen geniuses, and a multi-trillion-dollar empire
It may seem ridiculous, but if it weren’t for Cap’n Crunch cereal adding a toy whistle as a prize for kids, the two trillion dollar tech company known as Apple probably wouldn’t exist.
Cereal, toys, and sugar
The sugar-laden cereals of my youth used to contain all kinds of wonderful plastic treasures. One such example is the Bo’sun whistle that used to be found in boxes of Cap’n Crunch.
Ship’s captains would traditionally use a Bo’sun whistle to signal various maritime commands and meal times.
The cereal company version was just a small plastic toy, but it helped change the world forever.
One curious quality of the Cap’n Crunch Bo’sun whistle is that the tone it gives off is exactly 2600hz. That brings us to the next part of the story.
Revenge of the phreakers
Phreakers were a group of underground hackers. Specifically, phone hackers. The timeframe we are looking at here is somewhere between the mid-60s and early 70s, so computer hacking wasn’t exactly an activity for your average joe.
