One of my first experiences with microcomputer hobbyists was in 1977 when I heard someone call in to WBAI late at night and playing music generated from his TRS

One of my first experiences with microcomputer hobbyists was in 1977 when I heard someone call in to WBAI late at night and playing music generated from his TRS-80 over the radio. He used the radio frequency interference from the computer to make signals that were picked up by an AM radio. Then he held the phone to his radio when he called in to WBAI to demonstrate. After that the radio host was intrigued, and the caller said he could play the program over the radio, too, so people with TRS-80s could record the program and load it into their computer. So for the next few minutes over New York's WBAI, listeners heard the sounds of a TRS-80 cassette program being broadcast over the air. I was so interested in these computers that I did some sleuthing and found the caller, Nat, who introduced me into an entire seedy underworld of phone phreaks, hams, pirate radio station operators, and electronics hackers. Back in these days, my parents didn't think it was odd for a 14 year old kid to hang out with people in their 20s and beyond. And that's how my 35+ year career in computers and electronics, in New York, Silicon Valley, and Israel, started.