h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm wondering what the earliest verifiable usage of leetspeak in mainstream colture is. Most histories of leetspeak place it's origins on BBS's in the early 1980's. Given that time frame it would seem unlikely that it would be adopted in the mainstream for some of the usages I have seen of it. The earliest usage I have come across is Journey's Escape album in which the album name is spelled ESC4P3 as can be seen at http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=A5bkxu3x5anok the album was released in August of 1981. Does anyone have any earlier mainstream references?

I don't have a solid web site or page handy, but a psudeo-form of l33t was used back in the early 1970's. My father has a notebook of some of his original programs that he did in binary, way back when, and there are a few uses of t3h, j0, j00, and a few other simple-1337.

*shrugs* I don't know if that helps, but it's been traced back pretty far.

Ja ne.

Does the Megatokyo "Sp34k l33t" comic count as mainstream? It's how I discovered L33T. Or personalised number plates seem to use L33T, at least in New Zealand, but probably not in Britan because of rego codes you need in the plate. Here in NZ you can have any six digits as long as the combination isn't taken, and the use of L33T-like language is used extremly heavily to create new combinations or fit in longer words. For example, R4T, 3V1L, H8 XR8, and so on.