-> "Applying 110v to the telephone line", invariably at that point the
-> carrier would drop.
Back in them thar days, a friend of mine ran a BBS, and some disgruntled
fool tried to do exactly that to destroy the BBS's equipment.
Fortunately, he didn't know (a) that big voltages can't go through
telephone exchanges, and (b) that the BBS used an acoustically coupled
modem (remember them!) into which the handset of a phone that was rented
from the telephone company was placed. So the very worst he could have
done was to blow up the rented phone. But in fact he didn't even do
that. He just destroyed his own telephone connection.
                               dow
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