According to his phrack profile, he started in the phreak world in 1971 due to the Esquire article on blue boxes and YIPL magazine. He obtained his first blue box by January, 1972. He started hacking in 1975 after obtaining a TI Silent 700 Series, Model 700 exceedingly dumb terminal. He stumbled upon ARPAnet in Massachusetts, the bridge at MIT...1 hour later, he figured out how to get on. He toyed with the MIT exchange and found the MULTICS system and their artificial intelligence system. They were just beginning to use a language called LISP at the time.