May 3, 1978 the first case of SPAM is registered (SPAM: promotional emails sent en masse to many users; the term, which derives from a popular television sketch, will only be adopted a few years later).
To give an idea of how bizarre it was in 1978, it has to be considered that back then there was not yet the World Wide Web, and there wasn’t even the Internet in the sense we understand it today. There was the forerunner of the Internet, or Arpanet.
The sender has a name: Gary Thuerk. He was the marketing manager of a computer company in Boston that it is gone and was called Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC); to promote DEC computers, at 12:37 pm he sent, according to some versions, 230 or 393 or 400 (according to other versions) mails to a list of recipients who, it is said, reacted in anger. It should be borne in mind that at the time Arpanet users were 2600 in allso it’s as if the same email is being sent to more than a billion people today.
The angry reaction should have taught us something on the harmful effects of SPAM but it was not. In fact, the second reaction of the recipients of Thuerk’s e-mail was an increase in sales of DEC computers (according to some that email was worth $ 12 million in sales). And this instead taught us something about SPAM: many get angry, but then obviously someone falls for it. That’s why it still exists.
Finally, it is worth remember the exact text of that first messagewhich promoted the new Dec System, warning that it was all in capital letters which made Richard Stallman say: “No one should be allowed to send a message with such a long header, regardless of the content” (but in an interview next one Thuerk himself will say that Stallman hadn’t received the email and that he would say it wouldn’t bother him).
Ecco the text of the first SPAM.
“DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY; THE DECSYSTEM-2020, 2020T, 2060, AND 2060T. THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY OF COMPUTERS HAS EVOLVED FROM THE TENEX OPERATING SYSTEM AND THE DECSYSTEM-10
MONTH. THE LOCATIONS WILL BE:
TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1978 – 2 PM. HYATT HOUSE (NEAR THE L.A. AIRPORT) LOS ANGELES, CA
THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1978 – 2 PM DUNFEY’S ROYAL COACH
SAN MATEO, CA (4 MILES SOUTH OF S.F. AIRPORT AT BAYSHORE, RT 101 AND RT 92)
A 2020 WILL BE THERE FOR YOU TO VIEW. ALSO TERMINALS ON-LINE TO OTHER
DECSYSTEM-20 SYSTEMS THROUGH THE ARPANET. IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND,
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE NEAREST DEC OFFICE
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE EXCITING DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY”.
Gary Thuerk later became the father of SPAM, finished in the Guinness Book of World Records and traveled the world to give SPAM speeches in which among other things he said that was the first and last time who sent SPAM.