Happy Spamiversary
The BBC reports that Spam reaches 30-year anniversary
The first recognisable e-mail marketing message was sent on 3 May, 1978 to 400 people on behalf of DEC – a now-defunct computer-maker.
…The sender of the first junk e-mail message was Gary Thuerk and it was sent to advertise new additions to DEC’s family of System-20 minicomputers.
It invited the recipients, all of whom were on Arpanet and lived on the west coast of the US, to go to one of two presentations showing off the capabilities of the System-20.
Reaction to the message was swift, with complaints reportedly coming from the US Defense Communications Agency, which oversaw Arpanet, and took Mr Thuerk’s boss to task about it.
I was on the East Coast at the time, and did not receive the first spam message, although I seem to have received every one since then.
4 comments
Is Mr. Thuerk still alive? If so, does anyone have his email address? 😈
All bad ideas begin in sales and marketing departments. He should be around somewhere as Digital was a young company in all way in the 1970s.
Of course I wouldn’t really spam anyone. In fact, I once rejected a contract offered by one of my frequent clients to write some s/w to generate what could only reasonably be called spam. The client, using the s/w I had already written for him, generated literally millions of solicited emails a day… dealer-to-dealer emails on lists custom-filtered by the kinds of equipment being sold. I had no problem with that, of course. I just want it on the record that I have the courage of my convictions about spam, and that I would not spam Mr. Thuerk even if I could.
I might sentence him to personally remove spam from everyone’s mailbox if I thought it was possible, but you can’t expect an understanding of consequences from Marketing.